FrankTalk.org

Hi all,

Long time since I’ve posted. Won’t bore anyone with my recent history but suffice to say I’ve been weighing up the pros and cons of an implant and of course a primary concern at my age is lifespan of the device.

When you go on the Coloplast website it states a Titan Touch is good for 6.9 million cycles.

So I’m just wondering where the device fails (because they certainly do not last 6.9 million cycles which would be many lifetimes) and how they can get away with saying that.

Cheers.

You are right.. But then I guess they do life time replacement free of cost in case of failure.. thats how they get away with it..

But the issue is its not about the implant itself but the other costs involved( Surgeon, hospital etc) and top of it the pain, trauma etc every time you do a revision..

I have to suppose that if you go into their Laboratories you would see the Titans hooked up to machines which were rapidly inflating deflating them. It's not inside your body of course but I would bet that they're average would be 6.9 million.

They do not replace for free if a failure (so I have been told by Boston rep).

I think you maybe miss the point.
Doing 7 million cycles in a lab, where the pump bulb probably is fixed, the squeezing of the bulb is performed by a robot with the correct pressure every time, pressing at the centre of the bulb every time, etc - is not the same thing as when we do it in real life.
And most definitely - it is not the same force applied to the weak part of a Titan, the tubing insertion.
When we pump up we move around the pump. We pull it, we twist it and so on.
This will put force on the insertions and this is stressing the weak link of the Titan chain.
The more often we pump - the closer we come to that breakdown.
Especially if we are not careful while pumping, careful to hold the pump firmly in the correct spot without twisting it.

So it’s a technicality then, of course.

It’s still misleading to quote then because it does indeed refer to tests in a lab somewhere.

A more reliable stat to quote would be actual durability and length of time in patients.

But hey.

deepanvee wrote:You are right.. But then I guess they do life time replacement free of cost in case of failure.. thats how they get away with it..

But the issue is its not about the implant itself but the other costs involved( Surgeon, hospital etc) and top of it the pain, trauma etc every time you do a revision..

in italy coloplast 10 year guarantee, ams 5 years, no one replaces for life, plus the hospital costs of the surgeon, anesthetist and all the rest are paid even after one month from the implant, no guarantee

Then, the famous gaurantee of implant is a lie? I have readen a lot of times that implants have for life guarantee and now I am reading that it havent? What’s happened?

I usually look for the term "up to" when reading stats like this....

2 things that come to mind in reading this. First could you post the link to the information you are referring to? IIRC I read where the Titan cylinders were good for up to that amount of inflations. If that is so this has been posted on before. And there have been information on doctors on this. Seems that Titan outsources the tubbing used to connect the components and is the week part of the Coloplast device. AMS has softer cylinders and they do fail more often than the stiffer Titan cylinders but the tubbing fails more often than the AMS tubbing.

AS far as warranties this has also been posted on and one member had done some research on that. IIRC the point was the posting of companies about warranties dose not meet the legal requirements for one. Unless you receive a written warranty from the company on your device there is none you can use. In any case my understanding is that any replacement reimbursement is only done after the device is returned to the manufacturer and then they decide if they were at fault for the failure. I have read that a few doctors do have a free replacement in the event of a failure for different amounts of time after the first surgery. Or it could be this was in the past and they no longer do. There is a cash pay medical service where you can pay for a number of different procedures. IPP is one and the price with some very good doctors include a 25k insurance policy from a 3rd party company. That is good for up to one year post of.