Concerns Over ‘Metal on Metal’ Hip Implants

Concerns Over ‘Metal on Metal’ Hip Implants

via Concerns Over ‘Metal on Metal’ Hip Implants – NYTimes.com.

Matthew Holst for The New York Times

By BARRY MEIER

Published: March 3, 2010

Some of the nation’s leading orthopedic surgeons have reduced or stopped use of a popular category of artificial hips amid concerns that the devices are causing severe tissue and bone damage in some patients, often requiring replacement surgery within a year or two.

In recent years, such devices, known as “metal on metal” implants, have been used in about one-third of the approximately 250,000 hip replacements performed annually in this country. They are used in conventional hip replacements and in a popular alternative procedure known as resurfacing.

via Concerns Over ‘Metal on Metal’ Hip Implants – NYTimes.com.