Zimmer Knee Replacement Failure Proven in Many

The side effects of Zimmer knee replacements have long been known by patients of the implant – pain and difficulty moving sometimes require Zimmer knee revision surgery – as they are the ones who have suffered through difficulty and side effects, sometimes starting as soon as the patient receives the implant. Now these patients are finally getting some recognition from the medical community, namely Doctors Richard Berger and Craig J. Della, who presented their study which associated Zimmer knee replacements with high rates of knee implant failure. The most commonly affected system was the Zimmer NexGen CR-Flex knee implant.

8.3 percent of NexGen CR-Flex recipients required revision surgery within just five years of their initial surgery, according to the study. Revision surgery is a second surgery that is both painful and risky to the patient and that will remove the faulty implant and replace it with a new one. This procedure also has the potential to be very expensive and is not always covered by insurance. Recovery time for a revision surgery is almost always longer than that for initial surgery because tissue has already been damaged.

The study presented by Dr. Della and Dr. Berger was based on surgeries the doctors had performed themselves, a total of more than 108 procedures. They asserted that although the product is still commercially available, it should not be used for any patient due to the high risk of complications associated with the implant device. This study led many orthopedic surgeons to discontinue their use of the device, and patients who had already received it began to worry about their own safety and comfort. And – perhaps most importantly – lawsuits began to be filed.

Zimmer claimed that the surgeons were at fault for the high rates of failure associated with the device, an argument they also used when presented with the high failure rates of their hip replacement system, the Zimmer Durom Cup. In addition, Zimmer has filed a lawsuit against law firms they are claiming have defamed the name of both the company and the product.