Another metal-on-metal hip implant lawsuit has been filed over the Pinnacle Hip, manufactured and distributed by DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., which has been accused of rushing the device to premarket approval without any clinical trials.

The result, according to the hip replacement lawsuit, has been a large number of patients with pain, metallosis, pseudotumors, infection and inflammation, death of surrounding tissue, bone loss, or a lack of mobility.

Plaintiff Craig M. Coleman of Louisiana said that he had received a right hip replacement in October 2002, and a left hip replacement in April 2003, both with the Pinnacle Hip, according to his metal-on-metal hip replacement lawsuit. He underwent these surgeries, he claims, despite having immediately begun to experience “debilitating pain” following the October 2002 right hip surgery.

In his hip replacement complications lawsuit, Coleman says that he “immediately began to suffer severe pain in both hips, radiating down both legs and symptoms of failed implants,” and alleges that he continues to suffer and that the ordeal has cost him money and future earning capacity.

In his hip replacement lawsuit, Coleman accuses Pinnacle of marketing the hip replacement devices as “high performance” and  as “superior products that would allow patients to return to their more active lifestyles” when in fact they were defective. His hip implant lawsuit notes that government regulators in Britain issued a warning “after receiving widespread reports of soft tissue reactions and tumor growth in thousands of patients who had received these implants.” Doctors there had “to establish a system to closely monitor patients known to have metal-on-metal hips by monitoring the cobalt and chromium ion levels in their blood and to evaluate them for related soft tissue reactions,” the hip replacement lawsuit says.

The problem with the hip replacement devices, government agencies say, is that metal-on-metal cups can grind together releasing metal ions into surrounding tissue and a patient’s blood stream, leading not only to pain but also a possibility of metal poisoning. Many patients have required revision surgery to remove the hip implant and replace it.