If you get very cold, say if you’re outside in very cold weather, do your plates and pins get cold? Do you feel them?
I was just watching my dog out in the snow (it’s 16 degrees (F) here) and he’s 4 months off TPLO surgery, which means he’s got a plate in his knee. He was walking funny on that leg. Cold does seem to bother him still, but I’m not too worried about it.
But the little guy’s leg isn’t much thicker than a Coke bottle and he’s got zero fat around it, so I wondered if his plate gets cold.
People of course have more fat than a dog’s leg but it still got me to wondering…do medical plates and pins get cold?
I’ve got a couple of plates and some 13 screws in my ankle. Never get a sensation of cold. Occasionally the ankle will ache - I often assume it could have something to do w/ the cold/humidity/etc. But the ache isn’t predictable.
Animals’ bodies are weird - you can’t go solely based on appearances. You ever wonder at ducks swimming around unperturbed w/ their little legs in icy water?
Had a screw in one knee for about a year, and no, it never felt cold. Think about it- screws/plates are within the bone, which in most cases is toward the middle of the limb and well away from the surface of the skin. If a knee screw was cold, it would have to be very cold outside indeed- I’d think at that point, the screw wouldn’t be the worst part about that weather. Even on a dog, it’s more likely IMO, that the hardware is ferrying heat outward to the rest of the limb rather than conducting cold inward.
But that said, “weather knee” does seem to be a thing, as I can now predict the onset of a cold front within a day or two and its relative severity even if I haven’t seen the news, due to the pattern of onset of pain and its intensity.
I’ve got two screws in my knee. Nope they don’t get cold, but it does hurt like hell if I hit the head of the screw on something like a coffee table, don’t even need to hit it very hard.
Four months is very little time for TPLO surgery. Our GSD was still pretty gimpy at 4 months postop. By a year she was near normal, and today (3 years) I can’t watch her move and tell which leg had surgery.
I had jaw surgery to correct my bite a few years ago, I’ve got titanium screws and plates in my jaw, I can see them when I’m at the dentist and have one of those panoramic x-rays. I don’t notice or feel them at all.
Yeah I’m not worried about it, the doc said it could take up to a year for complete complete recovery. I was just pondering whether or not that plate got cold, walking naked in the snow & cold like that!
My late spouse said that the hardware in his right leg could get really cold - but he had a LOT, it entirely replaced his tibia and fibia, and the leg was somewhat atrophied so yeah, the distal part (towards the foot and ankle) could chill down a lot in single-digit weather. It wasn’t instant, though, he’d have to be outside in the cold for awhile. But the average bolted-together Joe with just a couple screws or a small plate? Probably not likely.
Bolding mine. You know that’s a nonsense explanation, right? All temperature change is heat moving away from the warmer body to the cooler one. There is no such thing as cold moving anywhere as distinct from heat moving away. We may refer to it that way as a kind of poetic license, but there is no “conducting cold inward.”
I have two plates and six screws in my left ankle from a break/surgery going on 13 years ago. I don’t feel cold there, but sometimes the area gets achy when it’s cold and damp outside. Those things are supposed to last at least as long as I do, right?
^This. And my knee replacement hurts a little in the cold. And sometimes I can feel the cold where my sternum was wired together following heart surgery.
My labrador came home yesterday from TPLO surgery. She gets to do it again in 9 months or so.
I was wondering to myself this afternoon if the plate was going to be a thing in cold or low pressure weather. Nice to hear others have the same thoughts.
I’ve had a plate and some screws in my ankle and I have never noticed anything at all. Never reacts badly to weather or anything else. Sometimes I wonder whether it is because the surgeon advised me to walk on it as soon as it felt comfortable to do so and not use crutches, although I used a cane for a week or do. Never had or needed physical therapy either.
Years ago, my dad shattered his ankle and had metal parts inserted to put it all back together again. I remember him saying it bothered him when he was standing in the cold ocean water - he could feel the metal get cold and it ached. It definitely ached in very cold weather. This was probably in the late 70s so they may use a different type of material or treatment of the material
by now.
