The thread about surgical steel made me wonder about this: In my left femur is a schneider rod, courtesy of a drunk driver and a top-notch orthopedic surgeon. The rod was supposed to be pulled a year or two after it was put in, but I never got around to removing it (Oh well.) That was sixteen years ago.
Reading the SS thread, I remembered the rod and started wondering how it was holding up in my leg. As stated in the SS thread though, some of the metals in some nickle steels can leach out and/or corrode, given the right environment, but, in a human body, this shouldn’t be a problem. The body is relatively nonreactive, so metal poisoning isn’t an issue and this thing will probably last a lot longer than my bones will.
What does worry me is how it structurally affects the femur. When I’m out of shape, my leg aches with changes in weather. It also aches when I get back into working out after not exercising for a while (the bone flexes around the rod and the marrow is slightly crushed.) Considering that the bone suffers some trivial damage when my bone mass is low, how likely is it that this rod could cause major problems when I’m much older? Alternately, if I, say, start playing rugby or take up parachuting, could the rod contribute to my breaking this leg again? The alternative is more surgery with the risk of complications. A friend went in for a schneider rod removal and the doctors gave up after only getting the thing to move a little over an inch. The rod goes in and comes out at the top of the femur, so the operation was a pain in the butt in more ways than one…
Before anyone mentions calling a doctor, I’ll probably call the surgeon who did the work, now that I’ve thought about it again, but what do you folks have to say about this one.
One of the hardest lessons for me to learn was that medical technology sometimes can’t fix everything. You may just always have a leg that aches in wet weather. ::: shrug :::
That aside, shouldn’t you be talking to a doctor or surgeon about this? You’re asking us, the by-definition crazy Straight Dope Message Board? I’m touched by your confidence, really, but what would you do if we told you to go to a homeopathic doctor and ask him to spray micro-revolutionary-molecular water on it? Or to an acupunturist? “Do the twirly needle thing, that’ll help.”
Try ESP…smoke weed…use Dr. Bronner’s soap on it…
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
A suggestion: For improved readership, word your topic lines more carefully . I realize that in this case you were making a clever play on a double entendre, but it has been mentioned before my many people here that a lot of us manage our time by simply not clicking on topics that make us go :rolleyes:
Unless you’re content with only getting replies from Notthemama, Unclebeer and WallyM7, shy away from the crude sounding topic lines.
Your question is a good one, and deserves a better response that it’s getting.
opus, of course you’ve got a good point. If this was a pressing concern, I would have made up a more conservative topic. It was a dumb line, but I couldn’t resist even if the price was watching the subject bomb down the forum list without a response.
Notthemama, rjk, Thanks for the help, but I doubt the ideas will work. The problem is that they did a kind of structural acupuncture to my legbone and it’s still there. Magnets probably won’t help with nickel steel. I don’t know about orthopedic hydrotherapy, though. I assume that a pressure washer would be required and I’ve made enough bad jokes for a while.
Don’t worry. There’s a lot of great people here, but, when it comes to my health, I trust people I don’t know about as far as I can throw people I don’t know. I had what I thought was an interesting question and was wondering if anyone had any anecdotes or knowledge that wouldn’t show up on the web that they could share.
I did call the surgeon’s office yesterday. His nurse basically commented that it had been in there a long time and was probably well fused inside the bone, mentioned extreme sports and said to call if anything happens. Sounds like it’s probably not a big deal.
Hey cornflakes, I have an 18" rod in the middle of my femur as well, but mine is titanium. The doctor told me to leave it in for life. I have had it in for about 8 years, and I don’t have problems with pain during weather change or anything like you mentioned. Is there any difference in SS and titanium that could explain the different recommendations our doctors gave?
In this world, you must be oh-so smart, or oh-so pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
Kyberneticist,
There’s no need for bone since no bone needs to be replaced. The rod runs down the shaft of the femur, displacing marrow, not the compact bone on the surface.
The rod sample that I was shown was X-shaped in cross section, with male threads on both ends. My impression of the procedure is that, prior to insertion, the marrow is drilled to fit the rod, which is then inserted. After the fracture has healed, the rod can be removed (I assume that some sort of a slide hammer is used.) Once the pin is removed, marrow grows to fill the void. Sixteen years after the operation, I assume that there’s enough marrow around and above the rod that removal would be complicated.
lswote,
My rod might very well be titanium. Along with the broken leg, I got a concussion which played hell with my concentration, so I may not have heard that right. In any case, I doubt that the metal composition would make that big of a difference; the decision whether to remove it may be a matter of preference on the behalf of the physician.
The weather doesn’t seem to affect it nearly as much as exercising regularly after laying off for a while. I weigh over 200 pounds, and I have the impression that bone strength and density changes in response to the stresses placed on the skeleton, so the bone may not be ready for the work. The soreness is no worse than the soreness you get when you start lifting weights, but an aching legbone just doesn’t seem normal.
What worried me was that I might be at risk for a fracture when I was older and might not be able to make a full recovery, but after thumbing through my copy of Gray’s Anatomy, I’m going to make the WAG that fractures of the shaft of the femur are not as common in older people as are fractures of the head and neck, the area where the femur branches out to attach to the pelvis, and these may be more common in women than men.
Flyhalf,
Late response, but I’ll buy that. While I’ve never met a rugger who didn’t have a facial injury (scars, broken nose, collapsed sinus, etc.), I’ve never met one with a broken thighbone.
