The metal-on-metal hip implant debacle appears to have claimed another casualty — a metal hip socket liner marketed by the British firm Smith & Nephew, which said it was pulling the product from the market.

We regularly review the effectiveness of our products and are not satisfied with the clinical results of this component, an optional metal liner in the R3 Acetabular System, a company press release said.

Annual revision rates in patients with the device were 1.6%, a Smith & Nephew official told Reuters, well above the 1% rate deemed acceptable by Britain’s drug and device evaluation center.

The company said 7,700 of the liners had been implanted since it was introduced in 2009.

In 2010, the DePuy unit of Johnson & Johnson recalled a metal-on-metal system for similar reasons. Marketing of others has been quietly terminated and the popularity of metal-on-metal systems has plummeted to less than 5% of the hip replacement market, by some estimates.

Metal-on-metal hip implants generally have been linked to high rates of revision surgery and systemic complications, apparently because of component erosion and leaching of metal ions both locally and into circulation. The FDA is currently considering whether to regulate the devices more strictly.

Phoenix, Arizona hip product liability attorney Stephen I. Leshner is currently handling Smith & Nephew hip replacement cases, as well as cases involving DePuy ASR, DePuy Pinnacle, and Wright Medical metal-on-metal hip replacement failure case.