UNITED KINGDOM – The United Kingdom is poised to ban the use of metal-on-metal hip implants in National Health Service hospitals, multiple sources reported last week. Regulators in the U.K. are reportedly considering the ban after a review of 17,000 cases by the National Institute for Health & Care Excellence found unacceptably high failure rates for some implants, according to The Telegraph. The report notes that the DePuy ASR was found to have failure rates estimated at 43 percent after nine years. The implant was withdrawn when manufacturers admitted to failure rates of 13 percent within five years, requiring revision surgery in close to 25 percent of cases within that period. NHS hospitals should stop using any implant with failure rates above 5 percent, the NICE recommended, which the Telegraph noted would remove almost every metal-on-metal device from the health system. The newspaper reports that the implants have already been subject to safety alerts amid fears they can leak toxic metal, and that two common models have been taken off the market and patients with the implants told to have annual checks. Depuy announced in May that it would discontinue sales worldwide of Ultamet Metal-on-Metal Articulation and Complete Ceramic-on-Metal Acetabular Hip System. Effective Aug. 31, the decision was not related to safety or efficacy and is not a recall, according to a company statement. DePuy discontinued the implants because of low clinician use, the availability of other options for patients, and proposed changes in FDA regulation of the entire class of metal-on-metal products, the Times-Union reported.
