Skip to content

Comment on Woman's hip replacement disintegrates, causing metal poisoning

Comments

Ouch! I must say, she got lucky they diagnosed the cobalt poisoning in time.

Why do they use cobalt? For imaging?! I always assumed they used titanium or platinum :/

  Cobalt-chrome is the most commonly used metal for hip implants. Titanium is also used but is a softer metal with similar properties to bone.
~ https://practiceplusgroup.com/knowledge-hub/what-hip-replace...

with known risks:

Cobalt toxicity — an emerging clinical problem in patients (2011) - https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2011/194/12/cobalt-toxicity-e...

Cobalt-chromium toxicity following revision of total hip replacement (2024) - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11115421/

Because the human body is warm and wet and salty and so despite the forces being low when your criteria are "super long wearing" and "non-reactive" you wind up with kind of a shitty list of options.

It's "supposed" to remain in solid form.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.