Johnson & Johnson‘s medical device sales outstripped its pharmaceutical division’s revenues for the first time in a decade during the second quarter, marking a sea change for the New Brunswick, N.J.-based conglomerate.

Although its device unit’s Q2 sales slipped 3.1 percent to $5.89 billion, drug sales fell even further, plunging to $5.5 billion — a 13 percent slide. That’s largely due to J&J losing its exclusive rights to make Risperdal and Topamax, as generic versions ate into sales of the anti-psychotic and epilepsy/migraine drugs (Risperdal sales were off 66 percent, while Topamax sales fell 73 percent).

J&J’s DePuy division, which has local operations in Raynham with its DePuy Spine and DePuyMitek divisions, posted flat sales of $1.3 billion. Sales for its Ethicon implants division rose 2.1 percent to $1.04 billion.

Overall sales fell 7.4 percent to $15.2 billion during the quarter, compared with $16.45 billion during Q2 2008, with domestic sales dropping 6.7 percent and international sales down 8 percent.

Johnson & Johnson posted net earnings of $3.2 billion for the quarter, down 4.7 percent compared with $3.33 billion during the same period last year. Earnings per share fell 2.5 percent to $1.15,compard with $1.17 during the second quarter of 2008.

In conference call with analysts, CFO Dominic Caruso said that although he doesn’t think medical device makers will be called upon directly to help fund healthcare reform, unlike the pharmaceutical industry, a recent $155 billion agreement to kick in to the effort by hospitals will likely put some oblique pressure on device firms, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog.

“We would expect medical device manufacturers would be contributing to that indirectly,” Caruso said, according to the blog.