New socket ‘cemented in’ One man’s struggles

Walter Walmsley’s metal-on-metal implant caused such a “mess” to flesh in his hip he had a device “cemented” in.

The 67-yearold needed revision surgery to his left hip, where a DePuy Pinnacle device had been placed in 2008.

He later developed pseudo-tumors and part of his hip socket had been eaten away.

“My surgeon’s immediate action was to book me as soon as he could to replace the implant. He did say quite clearly that he didn’t know what he was going to find,” Mr Walmsley said.

The five-hour surgery was carried out in the summer of 2010, two years after the first implant.

“The surgeon said it was a mess, it was a real mess. There was some measure of damage where the bone went away. He said part of the socket area that the ball sits in had been eaten away. So he wasn’t able to fit the new socket in. He had to cement it in.”

Mr Walmsley, pictured, of Leicester, had had arthritis since 2005, with pain in the groin and left hip.

In January 2008, he had his left hip replaced with a Pinnacle metal-on-metal implant. Six months later the right one was replaced by a ceramic-on-ceramic implant as the surgeon did not have any metal-on-metal devices in stock. That later, ceramic one has since caused him no trouble.

He said of the pain from the first metal-on-metal implant: “About a yearand-a-half after the initial replacement, I began to notice I was losing mobility. I had difficulty putting on socks and general movement was being lost.

“It was becoming stiffer and stiffer as the year went by and I was sent for some heavy-duty physiotherapy. I had four sessions of physio, sitting on a bicycle peddling away, hoping it was stiff muscles. But this just made it worse.

“I had to take a lot of time off work because of the pain. It was a shooting pain, like a hot pain, like a knife going in and I had to get an injection for it. They were calling it bursitis.”

Only in April 2010 when Mr Walmsley’s surgeon arranged an MRI scan was it found he had been suffering from acute lymphocytic vasculitis associated lesion and pseudotumors.

He spent nine days in hospital for his surgery – much of it waiting for a leg brace to be made to hold his hip in place.