Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
False
News & media
Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
Debate current medical affairs
This is an interesting article and food for thought which sheds light on How the Cement and Joints are recycled http://journals.lww.com/biomedicalsafetystandards/Fulltext/2012/07010/Implantable_Device
0
Cat:OffDutyForum:NewsMedia
Cat:OffDutyForum:NewsMediaDiscussion:6ed5becf-448a-48c4-8333-8c68ce22f27a
Forums » Off duty » News & media » Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
Forums
»
Off duty
»
News & media
»
Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
|
Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
posted at 18/8/2012 11:01 AM BST
on bmj.com
|
Posts: 311
First: 7/5/2009 Last: 2/4/2013 |
This is an interesting article and food for thought which sheds light on How the Cement and Joints are recycled |
|
|
Re: Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
posted at 18/8/2012 4:38 PM BST
on bmj.com
|
Posts: 2034
First: 12/3/2010 Last: 17/5/2013 |
Hmmmmmmm. "A Dutch entrepreneur saw the opportunity and created a nonprofit company called OrthoMetals, which recycles 250 million tons of implanted metal a year from cremated remains" If that's metric tonnes (1000kgs) at about 300gms per hip implant, that's over 800 million implants. With there being about 7,000 million people in the world, that's just over 10% of us having an implant, dying and agreeing to be cremated, and to having their ashes sifted. In England the incidence of THR is about 5% http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1059932/. It may be more in the US, it must be less for most of the rest of the world. I'd take six noughts off that total - 250 tonnes is more like it. But Orthometals is perfectly genuine, and to my mind, not shady at all. They offer a service to crematoria and to be a not-for-profit organisation donating to charities. See: http://www.orthometals.com/about Their video is facinating - pity about the soundtrack, but I suspect it's a Dutch thing! Oh, and those six people in the video - that's is all the company's workers! John |
|
|
Re: Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
posted at 19/8/2012 1:45 PM BST
on bmj.com
|
|
Posts: 2034
First: 12/3/2010 Last: 17/5/2013 |
No probs, drrathore! Thank you for posting about this - I never knew they existed, and I think they provide a valuable service. This raises another question - the disposal of human bodies. What can we do in the future? The graveyards are full, and areas of land devoted to human remains are usually inviolate for development, or even new burials, and very expensive to maintain. Great for wildlife, not so good when Mum dies. Relatively, cremation is not as good for the environment as it might appear. It uses a lot of energy to vapourise a body, and releases contaminants into the atmosphere, mercury from tooth fillings for instance. "Resomation" (Odysseus will translate) uses hot, high pressure alkali to reduce a body to a liquid, which can be poured down the drain. This is said to use a third the energy of cremation, but contaminants will go with the effluent. Freezing, with liquid nitrogen, produces a solid corpse that can be shattered by ultrasound, then freeze dried. The resulting powder may be scattered or buried and will be completely composted within eighteen months, allegedly, so re-use of the site is easy. though I wonder how often. Burial at sea. We have often in the past thought of the deep sea to be unfillable and uncontaminatable in real terms. No longer, I think. And it's a long journey from most coastlines to the really deep sea, so costly as well. Burial in Space. The famous astronomer Eugene Shoemaker's ashes were sent to the Moon. A wonderful trubute, but commercial space burial costs are estimated at $10,000, and not yet. Others, such as Gene Roddenberrey of Star Trek, and Timothy Leary of LSD fame, have ashes in Earth orbit, but no one has had more than a sample of thier ashes sent to space. Me, until now I've wanted to be cremated, but I'm beginning, as the time grows nearer, to wonder. John |
Forums » Off duty » News & media » Implantable Devices: Retrieved and Recycled: What Happens to Joint Replacements After Failure or Death
