I found this article interesting mostly because of the fact that it shows just how applicable so many of the classes I took in Biomedical Engineering are. As the title suggests surgeons are finding that metal-on-metal replacement hips are failing at a very high rate and causing patients a lot of problems. The article pinpoints a lot of basic Biomedical points that are very important to understand when designing a product for implantation. Essentially the problem here is that these metal-on-metal hip implants are being worn down and creating tiny pieces of metal dust that gets into the surrounding tissues. As I learned and others out there know this metal dust shouldn’t be in these areas so the body has an immune response where macrophages target these areas and try to engulf and remove the foreign material. The problem here is that there is so much of this metal dust that as it is broken down it becomes various ions that can react with the surrounding tissue and damage or completely destroy it.

This is a very important lesson to learn from which shows exactly how much studying needs to be done on products in the medical world, especially those bound for the inside of the human body.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/health/01hip.html?_r=2&smid=tw-nytimesscience&seid=auto