The health care products giant Johnson & Johnson continued to market an artificial hip in Europe and elsewhere overseas after the Food and Drug Administration rejected its sale in the United States based on a review of company safety studies.

During that period, the company also continued to sell in this country a related model, which earlier went on the market using a regulatory loophole that did not require a similar safety review.

It is not known how many people overseas received the replacement hip after the agency decided in 2009 not to approve it, nor the number who received the closely linked implant sold in this country. During some eight years on the market, the two implants were used in about 93,000 patients worldwide, about one-third of them in the United States. Both models were based on the same component, an all-metal hip socket cup that experts say was faulty in design.

The DePuy orthopedic division of Johnson & Johnson, citing declining sales, began phasing out both models of the device — formally known as an articular surface replacement device, which DePuy marketed under the name ASR — in November 2009 and formally recalled them in August 2010 amid reports in databases of orthopedic patients abroad showing they were failing prematurely at high rates.