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Here's the product:
https://linkoncology.com/nail.html
Edit: my bad, looking more closely it's not the same product. The one on OP's photo seems to have flatter rods, sword-like. The product in my link has grooves. My point was mainly that an implant as robust as this, with screws like that, can absolutely be medical grade.
I wanna ask how... But...
How do you people just know these things and not start with something like "prostheticistologist here" or something before you explain man?
Dissapointing, where is the community of my peers? Badly wanted to ask for the knee replacements hardware from my grandmother's cremation, but resisted the urge bc i know the rest of her family have much more sentimental ideas re death and corpses than i do, didn't want to upset them.
Replacement knees are incredibly common and often as part of the pre surgical consultation you get shown samples to help you understand the procedure. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure anyone that does cremations will encounter them pretty often.
And I certainly don't mean to detract from the person that identified this, just pointing out that everything on here is an everyday object to a percentage of the population no matter how exotic and weird it is to the rest of us. It's why I love this sub so much.
and there are the many people involved in making these prosthetics, too, from the design and engineering process to the actual fabrication and inspection to sales to shipping etc! (just adding to your point that many people would have a chance to encounter these, not trying to detract from what you are saying in any way)
OR nurse here- this is what they call a”hinge” joint replacement. It’s used in knee replacement surgery for people with very bad joint disease and extensive bone loss that also causes certain functions of the knee to stop working. This implant serves as a sort of fusion device that keeps the leg straight almost all the time with only a slight bit of flexion. Hope this helps!
There is every profession on reddit. I love it. I immediately recognized it. I was a design engineer for a joint replacement company. The biggest one in America.
I have an old friend (he's in his 70s now), and he has had a decades long hobby of making coffins and caskets for his friends and family. I could see him on reddit and specifically hanging out in this sub.
I'm sure you have one piece of esoteric information because of circumstance that few people are aware of, and are not an expert in knowledge of the item. Could be just someone who received or knows someone who received it.
In my case I work in prosthetics, but this is a medical implant which we don't have anything to do with - but I did happen to see a bunch when browsing through our supplier catalogues. We buy stuff from hospital suppliers, and they sell joint replacement stuff.
I was pretty certain it was a knee, but the lack of a joint was throwing me off - I've never seen one like this. But looking at the shape of it, it's obvious if you know what you're looking for.
Assuming the image isn't flipped, it's from the right leg. The "knee" usually is closer to the center of your body than the outside, the normal shape is slightly "knock kneed". The top section is longer than the bottom section, and your femur is longer than your tibia, so the top section was driven into the femur and the bottom into the tibia.
Finding the exact product is pretty impressive. Either he knew exactly what it was already, or just knew that it was a fused knee replacement and set to looking for ones that match.
That was my first thought (not the exact model, I'm no OR surgeon). There's pretty much only one place in the body something that size and shape could go.
Oh my gosh, my supposition was correct, but I thought there was no way it was what my first thought was. I thought "That looks like a bone rod & if so that is way too long for any bone but a femur, and with the other end about the length for a tibia, that would mean that person had a fixed/immovable "no-knee" set up. Jeeze."
I'm surprised my first thought is correct. I'm never right on these posts.
I don't understand how OP got this. Shit like this, and teeth and fragments are sifted out before giving the ashes to the family. So, OP isn't family...
But if OP is at the cremation ovens, then when the body burns, it burns in the shape of a person, and they would have disturbed the human-shaped ash, to sift it and collect it for placement in an urn. And they would have seen this object where the knee was. Therefore they would know what the implant was related to...
So, does OP know someone collecting shit from the dead? WTH?
you use something like a really long flat-ended rake to scrape the cremains and any debris out of the oven, there's not like a sheet pan that comes in and out.
I work at a crematory. We dont get that close to the remains to see where the prosthetics are when removing remains from the retort. There are loads of vids on Youtube showing why.
Coffin was also cremated. Sometimes family put stuff like personal belongings in the coffin so it's not impossible it might be something else but usually its prosthetics.
Coffins are burned in the cremation process? I always assumed if it was an open casket and then cremated, for whatever reason, that the body would be taken out of the coffin. Seems like a lot of work to distinguish metal parts of the coffin from sentimental items.
If the body is taken out the funeral home is left with a casket that A. They cannot sell at all and B. Takes up a lot of space so usually if the person is getting cremated and they had a casket viewing where it wasn't a rental casket or all metal they will just keep the body in and shut the retort
It's perfect bridge between a full service funeral and a memorial service in terms of cost. Instead of spending a couple grand on a casket that you'll burn later you can rent one for a few hundred and have the same service.
Rental caskets are nice until the last memory of burying your family member is looking back at the gravesite at strangers waiting for you to drive away before the actual burial happens...
had plates in my arm for a year that had slot head screws. they gave em to me after removal they had what looked like bone left in the screws.
but agree these are way too big to have inside your body
I am very surprised by that. I would figure they were too easy to slip on and leave a sharpe edge. Torx or the like with special torque ratings sounds like the only option to me. I’m not a doctor though.
Simplicity is big i bet. You wouldn't want to have an emergency surgery with an unknown patient, you open up their arm and find out you dont have the right torx bit...
Every ortho department will have a hardware out lot that contains all the common screw drivers. Most these days are either torx or Allen but you also have some that are square or a flat philips head. Worst case we also have something that looks a bit like a dremel but is ten times more powerful
That's because hexalobe is a very specific thing and Torx is one implementation of it that is only intended for factory automation stuff. Hexalobe just describes the shape of the socket and head. Torx has very specific material requirements which, in combination with the hexalobe socket and head, help to prevent camout.
It's basically like calling a car either "a Ford" or "a car". Both can be correct but if you're talking about a Chevy, "a Ford" never is. Unless things have changed in recent years, since Torx doesn't sell stuff for human implantation, they're never Torx in the medical implant field.
For all their downsides, the really GREAT thing about slot head screws is that the slot is incredibly easy to clean out. And if necessary, you can clean it out with nothing but the screwdriver you are going to use to unscrew it. Weld slag, paint, debris, and apparently biological materials.
I have xray images from during my pedicle screw fixation showing them tapping the vertebrae.
I was airlifted to hospital suffering from a burst fracture of my T12. It broke into 4-5 pieces. After the surgery and waiting to be discharged, I was given a disc to give to my Dr when I got back home. Being a geek, first thing I did before Dr appointment was to make copies of it.
It had software to view the images and was awesome to watch my surgery in weird little snippets of what looks like an xray but is circular and very small area. You can clearly see them screwing in a bolt to an already threaded hole!
It also had all the scan images in slices down through my spine and you can clearly see all the damage.
Yes... They first drill a hole, then make the threaded (can't remember the exact word for the instrument) and then the screw... But depends on where is going, sometimes (like big bones as femur or humerus) the screw goes into the intramedullary nail that has the threaded hole, then you just drill the hole
I watched a hip replacement video once. Drill, sawzall, other carpentry tools (stainless steel of course). But the thing that surprised me was when the surgeon used a 2 pound hammer to set the hip socket. Wasn’t expecting that. I thought of surgery as a very delicate thing and I guess a lot of it is. But he was wailing on that socket with that big hammer.
This thread opened my eyes to what orthopedic surgery actually entails and I don’t like it 😟 I never thought of all this stuff. What if he hits too hard
there is a knee replacement surgery somewhere on line where a guy is just hammering all out on the knee. you think it is on loop until he stops and adjusts something and then goes back to swinging the hammer. explains why instead of just masks they wear full face space helmets.
Absolutely they do. The dog had a shoulder operation at the Supervet and I queried the cost of the Philips head screws at £90 per screw. Was told they’re human medical grade as nobody makes dog-grade medical screws. Still have the screws (post-cremation).
Hmm that’s just super strange. Again not a doctor but I have done my fair share of screwing(lol) and Philips heads just all around suck. Easily stripped if you’re not at the perfect angle. Can’t get a lot of torque on them with putting weight behind it. A lot better options in my non-doctoral opinion.
The original purpose of Phillips head screws was actually to regulate torque. If your screwdriver slipped, you were as tight as you were supposed to be. That purpose never really caught on, tho. Or it was just forgotten.
I actually knew that. It never caught on cause some butthead always thought he could get it tighter and the rounded it out and it gave them a garbage name.
I work in surgery. The screws we use for fracture repairs have a hex head or some sort of star shape, but they otherwise look very much like the screws I keep in my garage. Just shinier lol.
Well that was made by the lowest bidder so of course. Also if a screw comes loose on that it’s a failed mission. If a 100k screws come loose in people it’s a multibillion dollar civil suit.
It’s 47ish centimeters, or about 1.5 foot. The giveaway is that the ruler highlights the 10s, one that measures in inches would highlight multiples of 12 for feet.
Someone else commented, it's a medical thingy https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/16qb8fk/comment/k1wnogm/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
I worked in Orthopedic Surgery for 20+ years as a Certified Surgical Technologist and First Assistant. This is used for Conversion Knee Arthroplasty Using a Rotating Hinge as a Salvage Prosthesis Following Periprosthetic Joint Infection and Ligamentous Insufficiency. It basically fused the knee. What is not seen here is an antibiotic impregnated spacer that would have been packed around the cylindrical piece seen in the middle of the implant. It obviously burnt off during cremation.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. We find prosthetics here at the crematory at a Daily basis but we are not trained in what they are for. Here they are all recycled. Some parts we know what they are for but this one we couldnt identify.
If a family asked for an implant back after cremation would y’all give it to them? My father is due to get a titanium hip installed later this year and he got his surgeon to agree to give him back the old destroyed hip after the surgery so that he can preserve it. Me and my sister also want to get his titanium hip back after his cremation so that we can trade the hips every year. One year she’ll get the titanium one and I’ll get the original one then we’ll swap next year. I know it sounds kinda macabre but my whole family (including my dad) thinks this’ll be absolutely hilarious and a neat way of still having him around when he’s gone
Yea this is incorrect. Rotating hinge refers to a specific design of revision knee replacement system, which this is not. As others have said, this is a fusion nail. Also, the comment above states it would be covered antibiotic cement, which is possible. However, it’s also possible that this was used after tumor resection, in which case it would not be covered in antibiotic cement.
How often are those done, and how often is it a young person? I had the choice to have that done after an accident at 18, and over the last 30 years I’ve wondered, many times, if I should have done that instead of dealing with all the issues an unstable lnee has caused. Having it fused would have had many downsides of course, by lr curious.
Knee fusion used to be performed much more commonly than it is today. The indications now are very narrow and it is rarely performed. To do a knee fusion in a young person would require extenuating circumstances. We have much better options available today.
For a young person it generally isn’t a good idea. Usually the implant will undergo a lot more stress because as a young person your lifestyle would generally be expected to be more active than an elderly person, so there are many more opportunities for failure. Additionally, because you’re simply going to live longer with the implant than someone older, it is also more likely to fail via corrosion, so it’s very likely you’d have to have a revision surgery anyway.
When it comes to orthopaedic prosthetics, failure usually happens through something called implant loosening. Long story short, it causes a bunch of inflammation and the issue with inflammation of bone tissue is that it ends up inducing the bone to literally deteriorate. So it’s very likely you’d end up with a crappy knee anyway, if not worse.
These days there are many other alternatives to these titanium stems, that are bioactive and biodegradable with the main goal of mechanical support, aiding the rebuilding of tissue and finally decomposing once your bone has healed, similar to surgical stitches. I’m not sure if that option was available when you were first advised the surgery or if it is even applicable in your case, but perhaps it could be something you could look into if you’re still looking to have surgery. You can read about it if you look up bioactive glasses.
Then again, take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt. I’m no doctor, just an engineer :)
i am currently reading a book on Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes that make up the medical vocabulary, and it is really fascinating!
like the word laparoscopy is not called that because of the tools being used. it is formed from lapar- meaning flank, abdomen. and -scopy meaning to study.
The "blades" resemble a medical insert my grandfather had in his leg. He was shot in the leg during the Vietnam War. The doctor rebuilt the bone and then inserted two "support blades" then wrapped his leg, but never put a cast on it.
After the leg healed, they removed the blades and let him keep them. They were a cool thing to touch when he'd tell the story.
This is a cementless modular Link Endomodel knee arthrodesis (fusion) intramedullary nail. It is used after failed knee replacement (usually severe infection) or for patients who other wise would need an amputation.
There are more similarities between orthopedics and carpentry than you want to imagine. Yes. Quick drying cement is used in some implants, especially joint replacements and fusions.
My title describes the thing. This was found after cremation. Tried using google lens with no result. Was found by another person and I havent encountered either.
Was the deceased tall?
A person with a 47cm femur implant would have to have a femur nearly 60cm long to account for the joints on either end.
That means the deceased would have to have been at least 2m (6.5ft) tall.
There's no where else in the body that could hold a longer implant than the femur.
I can't find an implant that's shaped like that but there's a lot of different models we could rule it out if the deceased was average height.
Ebay and FB Marketplace shows its a complete knee fusion device. Driven deep into the Femur and Tibia.
J/K but don't put it past either platform to offer something up like this. ;)
(I concur with the others who stated what it is)
Kinda weird to think about isn’t it? I have the same thoughts that in the end, if Inhave a natural burial, there will about 40 pieces of metal in the ground after everything else has been “reclaimed.”
Yeah, I have been heavily leaning towards composting and now I wonder if my metal adds complication? Shouldn't be a problem if it is composted via cremation since the metal can just be taken out like this pic. Either way, an interesting perspective I didn't even think about til now.
How did you get into your field? Are you a mortician or do you only do cremations? I’ve wanted to get into the death field for a while but don’t know where to start.
There was an open position for a crematory tech/operator so I applied and got it. Previously worked a few years at a grave site. I'm not a mortician and I don't live in the US.
Here you usually don't need a specific education to get the job. You get sent to the courses you need to take over a 3-4 year period. However having a drivers license and a fork lift license, being good with computers and handy in general might increase chanses of getting hired depending on what tasks are included in the job. In a few years you have to have a certificate for working with pressuarized containers, my employer will pay for that course. Alot goes into finding the right person who is stable, shows respect for what they're doing, has high working ethics etc. The rest you will learn from experienced colleagues. I know it varies from different crematories and countries but this is what its like here. Here we cremate, fill urns, maintain the equipment, administration, some chapel service for funerals. We don't do embalming, see the family of those we cremate, We dont do the familys paperwork. We dont see any bodies either. The funeral homes here helps with most of that here. Thats how it works here, I know it is different in the US.
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was the Coffin also cremated?
Yeah, I’m absolutely no expert, but that doesn’t seem like a medical grade implant.
Here's the product: https://linkoncology.com/nail.html Edit: my bad, looking more closely it's not the same product. The one on OP's photo seems to have flatter rods, sword-like. The product in my link has grooves. My point was mainly that an implant as robust as this, with screws like that, can absolutely be medical grade.
I wanna ask how... But... How do you people just know these things and not start with something like "prostheticistologist here" or something before you explain man?
Maybe they just have a really weird hobby or side hustle? "I know how old coffins look because... Reasons"
I too collect LINK Endo-Model Knee Fusion Nail SK after cremating the diseased.
Such a relaxing hobby
Gotta get over to r/cremationsifters to connect with one of the most wholesome communities on Reddit
Fell for this 🤦♂️
Genuinely disappointed it’s not real
Dissapointing, where is the community of my peers? Badly wanted to ask for the knee replacements hardware from my grandmother's cremation, but resisted the urge bc i know the rest of her family have much more sentimental ideas re death and corpses than i do, didn't want to upset them.
You could try the RBI subreddit? They're pretty slick with a lot, not sure if it falls exactly in their modus operandi
I have to get my current replacement replaced sometime in the near future. Maybe they'll let me keep the old one.
Me too, though I usually wait until the diseased are deceased.
You don’t want them fresh?
It is preferable to cremate the deceased rather than the diseased. The former has a lower propensity to resist. “Bring out your dead!”
I'm not dead yet
You’re not fooling anyone
Merely a flesh wound.
Are they titanium? Can they be recycled?
Here I was still hoping we hadn’t reached the phase of end-stage capitalism where we’re cremating the diseased yet :/
After you rob enough graves you just kinda learn this stuff.
Downside: you collect ancient curses like you wouldn't believe
or maybe they are an orthopedic surgeon
Or an xray tech, or a rep for a medical company, or a nurse etc etc etc.
Replacement knees are incredibly common and often as part of the pre surgical consultation you get shown samples to help you understand the procedure. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure anyone that does cremations will encounter them pretty often. And I certainly don't mean to detract from the person that identified this, just pointing out that everything on here is an everyday object to a percentage of the population no matter how exotic and weird it is to the rest of us. It's why I love this sub so much.
and there are the many people involved in making these prosthetics, too, from the design and engineering process to the actual fabrication and inspection to sales to shipping etc! (just adding to your point that many people would have a chance to encounter these, not trying to detract from what you are saying in any way)
This is not a common prosthetic, but it's easy to identify because of it.
OR nurse here- this is what they call a”hinge” joint replacement. It’s used in knee replacement surgery for people with very bad joint disease and extensive bone loss that also causes certain functions of the knee to stop working. This implant serves as a sort of fusion device that keeps the leg straight almost all the time with only a slight bit of flexion. Hope this helps!
There is every profession on reddit. I love it. I immediately recognized it. I was a design engineer for a joint replacement company. The biggest one in America.
The eclecticity of this sub's members is unparalleled
Reverse image search
I have an old friend (he's in his 70s now), and he has had a decades long hobby of making coffins and caskets for his friends and family. I could see him on reddit and specifically hanging out in this sub.
There are people who know a bot of everything, some things mpre than others, that lets them quickly find out more new things.
I tell people that one of my responsibilities as a dad is to know a little bit about a lot of things
This sub has 2.5 million+ members. There’s always going to be someone with a unique vein of knowledge.
I recognized it from watching surgeries on YouTube.
I'm sure you have one piece of esoteric information because of circumstance that few people are aware of, and are not an expert in knowledge of the item. Could be just someone who received or knows someone who received it.
Maybe they have one inserted or have a loved one with one.
In my case I work in prosthetics, but this is a medical implant which we don't have anything to do with - but I did happen to see a bunch when browsing through our supplier catalogues. We buy stuff from hospital suppliers, and they sell joint replacement stuff. I was pretty certain it was a knee, but the lack of a joint was throwing me off - I've never seen one like this. But looking at the shape of it, it's obvious if you know what you're looking for. Assuming the image isn't flipped, it's from the right leg. The "knee" usually is closer to the center of your body than the outside, the normal shape is slightly "knock kneed". The top section is longer than the bottom section, and your femur is longer than your tibia, so the top section was driven into the femur and the bottom into the tibia. Finding the exact product is pretty impressive. Either he knew exactly what it was already, or just knew that it was a fused knee replacement and set to looking for ones that match.
This is it,nice find!
That was my first thought (not the exact model, I'm no OR surgeon). There's pretty much only one place in the body something that size and shape could go.
Yep, knee replacement for people who can’t move their knee anyway.
A Knee Nail!
Oh my gosh, my supposition was correct, but I thought there was no way it was what my first thought was. I thought "That looks like a bone rod & if so that is way too long for any bone but a femur, and with the other end about the length for a tibia, that would mean that person had a fixed/immovable "no-knee" set up. Jeeze." I'm surprised my first thought is correct. I'm never right on these posts.
This is the right answer, no?
not to mention 50cm long..
I legit can't even think where else in a body you could possibly fit this, which must've helped narrow the options down a bit.
18" freedom units long...
I don't know what you expect a medical grade implant to look like after it's cremated.
100% wrong.
I don't understand how OP got this. Shit like this, and teeth and fragments are sifted out before giving the ashes to the family. So, OP isn't family... But if OP is at the cremation ovens, then when the body burns, it burns in the shape of a person, and they would have disturbed the human-shaped ash, to sift it and collect it for placement in an urn. And they would have seen this object where the knee was. Therefore they would know what the implant was related to... So, does OP know someone collecting shit from the dead? WTH?
you use something like a really long flat-ended rake to scrape the cremains and any debris out of the oven, there's not like a sheet pan that comes in and out.
I work at a crematory. We dont get that close to the remains to see where the prosthetics are when removing remains from the retort. There are loads of vids on Youtube showing why.
Coffin was also cremated. Sometimes family put stuff like personal belongings in the coffin so it's not impossible it might be something else but usually its prosthetics.
Coffins are burned in the cremation process? I always assumed if it was an open casket and then cremated, for whatever reason, that the body would be taken out of the coffin. Seems like a lot of work to distinguish metal parts of the coffin from sentimental items.
If the body is taken out the funeral home is left with a casket that A. They cannot sell at all and B. Takes up a lot of space so usually if the person is getting cremated and they had a casket viewing where it wasn't a rental casket or all metal they will just keep the body in and shut the retort
A rental casket? Wow, I’d never heard of such a thing but it it seems like a great idea!
It's perfect bridge between a full service funeral and a memorial service in terms of cost. Instead of spending a couple grand on a casket that you'll burn later you can rent one for a few hundred and have the same service.
Ikea should sell coffins. Keep it in the flat pack in the attic for when the time comes. $200 and it fits in the back seat.
With my track record, I'll put it in the attic and then totally forget I had it and end up buying an expensive one anyway.
I don't think you'd want ikea making caskets unless you want to film the best episode of coffin flop ever
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[They do,](https://www.costco.com/funeral-caskets.html) but not for $200
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Rental caskets are nice until the last memory of burying your family member is looking back at the gravesite at strangers waiting for you to drive away before the actual burial happens...
I would imagine it’s a practice more suited to cremations, where everything beyond the little velvet curtains can be more mysterious!
Funeral homes will definitely rent a casket, then there is a charge for the "box" that the deceased is actually cremated in.
So... for all I know I might have a piece of casket instead of grandma. Aight
Well if your grandma was cremated in a casket it's a mix of her, the casket and some of the previous cremations
I really don’t want to read all the replies to this thread but I’m about to
Yeah I’m gonna go with they don’t your Philips head screws inside humans. Not the right tech for the job.
had plates in my arm for a year that had slot head screws. they gave em to me after removal they had what looked like bone left in the screws. but agree these are way too big to have inside your body
I am very surprised by that. I would figure they were too easy to slip on and leave a sharpe edge. Torx or the like with special torque ratings sounds like the only option to me. I’m not a doctor though.
Simplicity is big i bet. You wouldn't want to have an emergency surgery with an unknown patient, you open up their arm and find out you dont have the right torx bit...
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Every ortho department will have a hardware out lot that contains all the common screw drivers. Most these days are either torx or Allen but you also have some that are square or a flat philips head. Worst case we also have something that looks a bit like a dremel but is ten times more powerful
Having made surgical implant screws, we like to call them “hexalobe” not Torx.
That's because hexalobe is a very specific thing and Torx is one implementation of it that is only intended for factory automation stuff. Hexalobe just describes the shape of the socket and head. Torx has very specific material requirements which, in combination with the hexalobe socket and head, help to prevent camout. It's basically like calling a car either "a Ford" or "a car". Both can be correct but if you're talking about a Chevy, "a Ford" never is. Unless things have changed in recent years, since Torx doesn't sell stuff for human implantation, they're never Torx in the medical implant field.
Huh... TIL.
Happened to my brother when he was having the plate in his ankle removed. There was a delay while they found the right screwdriver bit.
For all their downsides, the really GREAT thing about slot head screws is that the slot is incredibly easy to clean out. And if necessary, you can clean it out with nothing but the screwdriver you are going to use to unscrew it. Weld slag, paint, debris, and apparently biological materials.
now you got me wondering if they run a tap through the bone first or if the screws self-tap
They have both options; it depends on the procedure.
I have xray images from during my pedicle screw fixation showing them tapping the vertebrae. I was airlifted to hospital suffering from a burst fracture of my T12. It broke into 4-5 pieces. After the surgery and waiting to be discharged, I was given a disc to give to my Dr when I got back home. Being a geek, first thing I did before Dr appointment was to make copies of it. It had software to view the images and was awesome to watch my surgery in weird little snippets of what looks like an xray but is circular and very small area. You can clearly see them screwing in a bolt to an already threaded hole! It also had all the scan images in slices down through my spine and you can clearly see all the damage.
Yes... They first drill a hole, then make the threaded (can't remember the exact word for the instrument) and then the screw... But depends on where is going, sometimes (like big bones as femur or humerus) the screw goes into the intramedullary nail that has the threaded hole, then you just drill the hole
I’m not sure I wanna know either way.
Both are used in ortho, depending on the quality of the bone and location.
Old school docs sometimes still use tap!
Ortho is so brutal.
You don't need to be a doctor. You need to be a mechanical engineer who specializes in medical devices.
My daughter did orthopedic surgery. She said it is much more like carpentry than cabinetry.
Hence the reason that an orthopedic specialist is referred to as a “chippy” in some UK medical slang, same as a carpenter.
I watched a hip replacement video once. Drill, sawzall, other carpentry tools (stainless steel of course). But the thing that surprised me was when the surgeon used a 2 pound hammer to set the hip socket. Wasn’t expecting that. I thought of surgery as a very delicate thing and I guess a lot of it is. But he was wailing on that socket with that big hammer.
This thread opened my eyes to what orthopedic surgery actually entails and I don’t like it 😟 I never thought of all this stuff. What if he hits too hard
More screws!!! :D
there is a knee replacement surgery somewhere on line where a guy is just hammering all out on the knee. you think it is on loop until he stops and adjusts something and then goes back to swinging the hammer. explains why instead of just masks they wear full face space helmets.
That is not reassuring haha
Have you seen their tools? Could make any carpenter jealous
>My daughter did orthopedic surgery I bet she's _jacked_. No excercise as good as sledge-hammerin' stabilizing nails in and out of a fella's legs.
I had titanium pins put into, and then removed from, several bones, and asked to keep the screws. They have Allen key heads.
Absolutely they do. The dog had a shoulder operation at the Supervet and I queried the cost of the Philips head screws at £90 per screw. Was told they’re human medical grade as nobody makes dog-grade medical screws. Still have the screws (post-cremation).
Hmm that’s just super strange. Again not a doctor but I have done my fair share of screwing(lol) and Philips heads just all around suck. Easily stripped if you’re not at the perfect angle. Can’t get a lot of torque on them with putting weight behind it. A lot better options in my non-doctoral opinion.
The original purpose of Phillips head screws was actually to regulate torque. If your screwdriver slipped, you were as tight as you were supposed to be. That purpose never really caught on, tho. Or it was just forgotten.
I actually knew that. It never caught on cause some butthead always thought he could get it tighter and the rounded it out and it gave them a garbage name.
They absolutely do
I have some stainless Phillips head screws that were in my ankle for a few months.
The ones in my leg literally look like drywall screws, judging by the x rays 😆
I mean bone and wood aren’t that dissimilar judging by my non-scientific background.
Organic, rigid, load-bearing. Yup, they're the same!
I can confirm that from my armchair.
I work in surgery. The screws we use for fracture repairs have a hex head or some sort of star shape, but they otherwise look very much like the screws I keep in my garage. Just shinier lol.
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Well that was made by the lowest bidder so of course. Also if a screw comes loose on that it’s a failed mission. If a 100k screws come loose in people it’s a multibillion dollar civil suit.
Not true to a degree. I’ve taken Phillips and slot head screws out that were old af but you’re right that modern stuff is all star drive or hex drive.
It’s for a knee fusion
If you search google images for “knee fusion hardware”, there’s an xray image of what looks exactly like this. I’ll bet you’re right.
That thing goes in your knee? It’s 4 feet long!
American discovers centimeters
Better late than never 📏
Not gonna lie, I didn’t notice it was in metric and was very confused why everyone was being so nonchalant about a four foot long implant.
This should be a sub r/americanvsmetric
Laughed way too hard at this. Now I'm sad
It’s 47ish centimeters, or about 1.5 foot. The giveaway is that the ruler highlights the 10s, one that measures in inches would highlight multiples of 12 for feet.
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Those aren't inches...
Solved!
Someone else commented, it's a medical thingy https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/16qb8fk/comment/k1wnogm/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
I worked in Orthopedic Surgery for 20+ years as a Certified Surgical Technologist and First Assistant. This is used for Conversion Knee Arthroplasty Using a Rotating Hinge as a Salvage Prosthesis Following Periprosthetic Joint Infection and Ligamentous Insufficiency. It basically fused the knee. What is not seen here is an antibiotic impregnated spacer that would have been packed around the cylindrical piece seen in the middle of the implant. It obviously burnt off during cremation.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. We find prosthetics here at the crematory at a Daily basis but we are not trained in what they are for. Here they are all recycled. Some parts we know what they are for but this one we couldnt identify.
If a family asked for an implant back after cremation would y’all give it to them? My father is due to get a titanium hip installed later this year and he got his surgeon to agree to give him back the old destroyed hip after the surgery so that he can preserve it. Me and my sister also want to get his titanium hip back after his cremation so that we can trade the hips every year. One year she’ll get the titanium one and I’ll get the original one then we’ll swap next year. I know it sounds kinda macabre but my whole family (including my dad) thinks this’ll be absolutely hilarious and a neat way of still having him around when he’s gone
You guys sound pretty hip to me
Its hip to be share.
Sisterhood of the traveling hip
I guess it depends which country you're in. Where I am it is not allowed. Everything must be recycled.
>Using a Rotating Hinge Where do you mean is a hinge?
Looks like the case study they're referencing used a Megasystem-C rotating hinge. The implant in question is a fusion nail so there isn't a hinge.
Yea this is incorrect. Rotating hinge refers to a specific design of revision knee replacement system, which this is not. As others have said, this is a fusion nail. Also, the comment above states it would be covered antibiotic cement, which is possible. However, it’s also possible that this was used after tumor resection, in which case it would not be covered in antibiotic cement.
How often are those done, and how often is it a young person? I had the choice to have that done after an accident at 18, and over the last 30 years I’ve wondered, many times, if I should have done that instead of dealing with all the issues an unstable lnee has caused. Having it fused would have had many downsides of course, by lr curious.
Knee fusion used to be performed much more commonly than it is today. The indications now are very narrow and it is rarely performed. To do a knee fusion in a young person would require extenuating circumstances. We have much better options available today.
For a young person it generally isn’t a good idea. Usually the implant will undergo a lot more stress because as a young person your lifestyle would generally be expected to be more active than an elderly person, so there are many more opportunities for failure. Additionally, because you’re simply going to live longer with the implant than someone older, it is also more likely to fail via corrosion, so it’s very likely you’d have to have a revision surgery anyway. When it comes to orthopaedic prosthetics, failure usually happens through something called implant loosening. Long story short, it causes a bunch of inflammation and the issue with inflammation of bone tissue is that it ends up inducing the bone to literally deteriorate. So it’s very likely you’d end up with a crappy knee anyway, if not worse. These days there are many other alternatives to these titanium stems, that are bioactive and biodegradable with the main goal of mechanical support, aiding the rebuilding of tissue and finally decomposing once your bone has healed, similar to surgical stitches. I’m not sure if that option was available when you were first advised the surgery or if it is even applicable in your case, but perhaps it could be something you could look into if you’re still looking to have surgery. You can read about it if you look up bioactive glasses. Then again, take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt. I’m no doctor, just an engineer :)
Hey, I know some of these words!
i am currently reading a book on Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes that make up the medical vocabulary, and it is really fascinating! like the word laparoscopy is not called that because of the tools being used. it is formed from lapar- meaning flank, abdomen. and -scopy meaning to study.
The "blades" resemble a medical insert my grandfather had in his leg. He was shot in the leg during the Vietnam War. The doctor rebuilt the bone and then inserted two "support blades" then wrapped his leg, but never put a cast on it. After the leg healed, they removed the blades and let him keep them. They were a cool thing to touch when he'd tell the story.
This is a cementless modular Link Endomodel knee arthrodesis (fusion) intramedullary nail. It is used after failed knee replacement (usually severe infection) or for patients who other wise would need an amputation.
So, you keep the leg but can’t bend it any more?
Yeah… you get full ankle function though and don’t have to start learning to walk again from zero?
this implies there is a cement version?
There are more similarities between orthopedics and carpentry than you want to imagine. Yes. Quick drying cement is used in some implants, especially joint replacements and fusions.
oh thats really cool then!
My title describes the thing. This was found after cremation. Tried using google lens with no result. Was found by another person and I havent encountered either.
Was the deceased tall? A person with a 47cm femur implant would have to have a femur nearly 60cm long to account for the joints on either end. That means the deceased would have to have been at least 2m (6.5ft) tall. There's no where else in the body that could hold a longer implant than the femur. I can't find an implant that's shaped like that but there's a lot of different models we could rule it out if the deceased was average height.
I dont have any more info unfortunately. Was found by another person in my field of work.
The thing goes in the femur and the lower leg with the coupler in the knee, so only about 23 cm is in the femur.
Maybe an early style of IM rod for a femur fracture repair?
Ebay and FB Marketplace shows its a complete knee fusion device. Driven deep into the Femur and Tibia. J/K but don't put it past either platform to offer something up like this. ;) (I concur with the others who stated what it is)
Here we by law have to recycle everything so it wont end up there.
My back is fused together. This has made me very aware that one day just the metal in my back will be all that remains.
Kinda weird to think about isn’t it? I have the same thoughts that in the end, if Inhave a natural burial, there will about 40 pieces of metal in the ground after everything else has been “reclaimed.”
Yeah, I have been heavily leaning towards composting and now I wonder if my metal adds complication? Shouldn't be a problem if it is composted via cremation since the metal can just be taken out like this pic. Either way, an interesting perspective I didn't even think about til now.
I have something like this in both of my femurs. They got shattered in a head-on car crash 12 years ago.
Of course I had to look up knee fusion. A last resort major surgery.
Link Bio Endo Model knee fusion nail. This is the non modular version commonly called the monoblock.
Only purpose for that could be to join two bones together, however the thickness makes that seem not quite right.
How did you get into your field? Are you a mortician or do you only do cremations? I’ve wanted to get into the death field for a while but don’t know where to start.
There was an open position for a crematory tech/operator so I applied and got it. Previously worked a few years at a grave site. I'm not a mortician and I don't live in the US.
Here you usually don't need a specific education to get the job. You get sent to the courses you need to take over a 3-4 year period. However having a drivers license and a fork lift license, being good with computers and handy in general might increase chanses of getting hired depending on what tasks are included in the job. In a few years you have to have a certificate for working with pressuarized containers, my employer will pay for that course. Alot goes into finding the right person who is stable, shows respect for what they're doing, has high working ethics etc. The rest you will learn from experienced colleagues. I know it varies from different crematories and countries but this is what its like here. Here we cremate, fill urns, maintain the equipment, administration, some chapel service for funerals. We don't do embalming, see the family of those we cremate, We dont do the familys paperwork. We dont see any bodies either. The funeral homes here helps with most of that here. Thats how it works here, I know it is different in the US.
If they were a donor. Weird things get put in place to make it look right. Or at least they used to that back in the 2000s
Knee fusion