We recently reported on a study that revealed that the metal-on-metal hip replacements failed three times more often than other artificial hips. In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered twenty-one (21) artificial hip manufacturers to conduct studies of the Metal-on-metal (MoM) hip replacement devices, and how they can adversely affect patients, after having received close to 11,000 reports of defective hip failures from January through September 2011.
All of this concern may be for nothing, as findings of a new study reveal that the all-metal artificial hip replacements provide no advantage when compared to older types of hip implants – they just appear to carry a greater risk of problems.
FDA researchers just published a report in the British Medical Journal in which the effectiveness of a number of types of hip implants was examined. Metal-on-metal hip implants were examined, as were ceramic-on-ceramic implants, and they were compared to the older metal on polyethylene implants and ceramic on polyethylene implants. The comparative study looked at 3,139 patients in 18 comparative studies. Data from 83,000 operations worldwide was reviewed.