DePuy Orthopaedics Inc history

In 1901 he moved the operation to Niles, Michigan—taking with him his wife of five years, Winifred Stoner.

In 1901 he moved the operation to Niles, Michigan—taking with him his wife of five years, Winifred Stoner. It was in Michigan, in 1903, that he incorporated the company as DePuy Manufacturing Company of Elk-hart, Indiana.

Unfortunately, however, the move to Michigan did not accomplish what DePuy had hoped, so in 1904 he and Winifred moved the splint business back to Warsaw.

By 1919 the company had 16 employees, six of whom were traveling salesmen.

In 1924 Winifred remarried, wedding H. Herschel Leiter, a local insurance salesman who had previously worked as a salesman for DePuy.

After 20 years of working with the DePuy company, John Zimmer branched out to begin his own business in 1926.

When Winifred DePuy Leiter died in 1949, her second husband was left as sole owner of DePuy Manufacturing.

Leiter's death in 1950 threw the company into a state of near-crisis, as Leiter had promised to leave control of the company to its salesmen but actually bequeathed it to his new wife instead.

Founded in 1960, Synthes is a medical device company based in Switzerland and Pennsylvania, the US, and focused on the largest maker of implants to mend bone fractures, for $20.2bn.

In 1963 Thackray began working with the world’s foremost pioneer in hip replacement surgery, Sir John Charnley, to produce cemented hip fixation systems.

They sold DePuy to a group of investors in 1965, and Landis became the company’s president.

DePuy changed ownership again in 1968, when Bio-Dynamics, Inc., a blood diagnostic business, acquired it.

In 1974 Bio-Dynamics itself was purchased by Boehringer Mannheim, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Europe.

Fifty-one years later, in 1977, four men with orthopedic backgrounds formed another company called Biomet.

In 1979 the company gained the rights to use a new technology--a method of sintering a porous surface to orthopaedic implants, thereby allowing human tissue to be more effectively fixed--devised by Canadian Oxygen, Ltd.

In 1980 DePuy introduced its LCS Total Knee System, an artificial knee that used mobile (rather than fixed) bearings to duplicate more closely the mechanics of a healthy human knee.

With a presence already established in Canada and Latin America, the company in 1984 targeted the Italian market through a network of 12 regional importers.

James Lent, who had accrued considerable industry experience as the president of Johnson & Johnson's orthopaedic division, took over as company president in 1985 after Robert Williams's retirement.

Some of this growth was the result of a strategic partnership established in 1989 with the DuPont Company.

Lent changed offices in 1990, becoming DePuy's chairman and chief executive officer.

In November of 1991, DePuy made Thackray its international headquarters and rechristened it DePuy International Ltd.

After it was acquired by DePuy, Rotek expanded rapidly, moving into a new 20,000-square-foot facility in 1992.

DePuy expanded its presence in the arthroscopy market in 1993, establishing a separate manufacturing operation in Ontario, California, to produce arthroscopy instruments.

Another 1994 acquisition was DePuy CMW, a bone cement manufacturer based in Blackpool, England.

One Hundred Years of Orthopedic Excellence, Warsaw, Ind.: DePuy, Inc., 1995.

In October 1996, DePuy went public, offering 14 million shares of common stock priced at $17.50 per share.

In early 1997, the company purchased almost two million shares of Landanger-Camus, a leading French manufacturer of hip implants and one of the top distributors of orthopedic supplies and devices.

DePuy Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company since 1998, is a leading designer, manufacturer, and distributor of orthopaedic devices and supplies.

The company had diversified to the point that 50 percent of its sales in 1999 occurred outside the United States.

At the same time, DePuy and J&J were also grappling with lawsuits surrounding failures of its Pinnacle hip implants, which were first FDA approved in 2000 and had a similar metal-on-metal design to the ASR products.

However, as early as 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received complaints about the ASR device.

“It wasn’t exactly an accident of history, but it was an evolution over time, as one company spun off from another,” says Brad Bishop, executive director of OrthoWorx, formed in 2009 and funded by a grant from the Eli Lilly company.

The DePuy ASR (Articular Surface Replacement) Hip Resurfacing System and the ASR XL Acetabular System total hip replacement were recalled in August of 2010 by DePuy Orthopaedics and the company also discontinued the all-metal models of the Pinnacle hip devices.

Approved in 2011, DePuy’s ATTUNE knee system allows for a total knee replacement to allow for more natural movement.

Later, in 2012, Johnson & Johnson acquired global medical device company Synthes, Inc., and combined that company with the DePuy franchise to create one of the world’s largest orthopaedic and neurological businesses.

Thousands of ASR hip lawsuits were settled in 2013 for a total cost of $4 billion, and about 6,000 Pinnacle hip lawsuits were settled for about $1 billion.

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In December 2016, DePuy Synthes announced it would acquire Pulsar Vascular Inc., adding Pulsar to its Codman division.

DePuy began seeing the first Attune Knee lawsuits in 2017 and more continue to be filed.

Warsaw: Indiana’s Lake City & The World’s Orthopedic Capital | OrangeBean Indiana October 4th, 2018 at 7:17 pm […] as well as local efforts to lure companies from the orthopedic industry to town, Warsaw’s history with orthopedic innovation goes back over a hundred […]

In January 2021, DePuy Synthes announced it had received FDA clearance to use its VELYS robotic-assisted surgery product alongside its ATTUNE total knee system.