A lady i work with had her hip replaced back in January. She’s back to work now and telling me about a prescription she has to take now. To put this in a nutshell, any time from now on, any procedures she undergoes (dental, OBGYN, etc) she has to take 6 pills to prevent her prothesis from having to be removed. Any infection also will lead to the same thing. She and i are wondering why, for example, an infection on her finger could lead to a problem that would mean her new hip being replaced. Is it something about titanium that it can’t deal with antibodies very well?
Educated WAG here:
When a procedure, wound or infection occurs, your body kicks its immune system into overdrive in order to fight back and try and return things to “normal”. Thanks to the blood stream, whether the target site of the immune system is in the finger or hip doesn’t make much of a difference. While your co-worker’s “normal” status now includes a hunk of titanium, the new cells generated during an immune response may begin to act upon tissues in her body which are connected to the titanium. This could lead to a total rejection of the tissues in that are, since they might be mistakenly identified as “non-self” and destroyed. That wouldn’t be a good thing. The titanium itself won’t suffer (won’t be damaged), but her body will, and the joint would have to be removed again. The series of pills she can take during a procedure/infection will hopefully prevent rejection of the surrounding tissue.