There have been many that have gone to the hydraulic roller camshaft. The vast majority seemingly have not had issues with it.
Apparently though enough have had this kind of issue with components to it.
There are many that scoff at what I do as, i.e., the component decisions that I make as "old hat from the 'old guy' ". Perhaps that is right but one thing that will never happen at my end is to have this kind of failure simply because I will never go to a roller lifter camshaft. It simply introduces an additional level of potential component failure in the valve train that ultimately can have catastrophic consequences.
The potential failure risk far out ways the small benefits of using a hydraulic lifter valve train.
I personally have seen this type of failure too often. The roller lifter solution simply is not a bulletproof one. Why risk it?
I'm sorry for your loss.