Hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide may have been exposed to significant quantities of toxic metals due to defects in hip implants, even though this risk was known, the British Medical Journal and the BBC warned today, following joint research.

The French newspaper Le Figaro has also revealed that the ASR hip implants produced by DePuy Orthopaedics, a subsidiary of the American firm Johnson & Johnson, had been withdrawn from the American and Australian markets in 2009 but were still on sale in France until July 2010.

Given that hip implants, like breast implants, fall into the medical consumables category and therefore are not subject to the same marketing restrictions as medicines, what action can the Commission take to protect patients in EU Member States?