My opinion about Implant Longevity: - Worry is the Thief of Joy

[Jgoody]

Agreed! I added the over reporting possibility because aussieguy said there are sometimes duplicate reports but feel like most likely failures would be under reported in there. Can't say I disagree with anything else said there

[Jgoody]

Very interesting topic, guys. I think Tooyoung is right in his assumption that even without a denominator, one can estimate life expectancy from the median failure times reported in MAUDE. At the same time, Woody/GPT’s argument also makes sense: MAUDE reports are voluntary, meaning that patients who get 10 years of use from their device are far less likely to report it.

I would also like to add that if someone doesn’t trust official studies about failure rates, it is still possible to form a general idea of IPP life expectancy from studies that mainly address other purposes but indirectly provide data on device failures during the study period. For example: https://bacandrology.biomedcentral.com/ ... 21-00123-x

That being said, I prefer not to focus on things I cannot control, but rather on the things I do have influence over. So the real question we should ask is: how can we extend the life expectancy of these devices?

Cylinder leaks → Could avoiding pumping to the maximum 100% reduce the likelihood of leaks?

Tubing breaks → Could avoiding twisting the pump while inflating help prevent this?


After all, we are talking about hydraulic devices manufactured in series, so they are likely very similar. If some last 10 years, then (excluding defective units that fail within the first few months),it seems reasonable that others of the same series could last just as long, provided we adopt a few precautions.
Actually it wuold be interesting starting a thread specifically for discuss this potential strategies
What do you think?

Great response. I looked at that study you shared & see 84% survival rate at 6.6 years I believe, which seems about in line with what we've been told.

I'm interested in the subject of implant longevity myself. In fact, I pretty much avoided peritos exercises for that reason because I don't see how that is good on the system. Despite wanting more potential "growth" from doing them. I wish I could definitively say it's harmful or harmless or not because I'd do them if there was potential for growth & no harm done to the system but I just can't imagine they don't cause at least unnecessary ware & tear. Whether that's the reason I'm down a half inch in girth & length or not is debatable. It seems that plenty of guys lose a small amount, so I'm okay with that & good with where I'm at.

I decided I'm taking a more conservative approach & only was max, max pumping the 1st year. I'm hoping to get a long time out of mine, especially being I had to pay out of pocket. I totally get tooyoungs concern. I'm fortunate that at that age pills worked still or I woulda wanted to nuke the planet, if nothing worked for me. I didn't even know about implants until maybe 2 years ago.

Hoping these companies have trustworthy products for young men to use in the very near future. Also really hoping that insurance can get their shit together & cover implants more for all of us "younger" guys.

[Kiwias]

I know I said I didn't intend to post further on this topic but I have been following it and believe the discussion is worthwhile. That being said I don't have a strong position because I'm an oldie, albeit a fit and active one, and am more likely to be dead, decrepid or demented before any device I have implanted fails.
I would probably feel completely differently if I was facing this challenge at a younger age.
In my opinion there are 2 issues that need to be looked at
1. Early failure - What are the causes of these? Quality control? Surgeon error etc?. It seems likely to me that if these are better understood they can be mitigated against.
2. Eventual failure. In my opinion this is most likely due to built in obsolescence rather than technological issues. Unfortunately this is a byproduct of our economic system. This one will be very hard to prove, challenge or change.

I don't find tooyoung's arguments irritating but that being said I do feel strongly about misunderstanding, misinterpretation or misuse of statistical methodology. This is much too common nowadays and can be seen across the internet, media, politics and even peer reviewed research.
This does push my buttons:-)

> tooyoung wrote:
“I’m only looking at time to failure … with ~350 reports a month in MAUDE and ~20–25k implants a year, that shows 20–30% yearly revision. Doesn’t that prove reliability is poor?”

I think this needs to be unpacked carefully, because “time to failure” has a very specific statistical meaning.

1. Time-to-failure requires patient-level data.
To analyze “time to failure,” you need to follow a cohort of implants from insertion until event (failure or censoring). That’s how Kaplan–Meier survival curves are built.
MAUDE reports don’t provide that. They’re a pile of adverse events with no denominator, no total exposure time, and no survival curve. Using them as a proxy for time-to-failure is methodologically invalid.

2. Mixing counts and survival leads to distortion.
Taking “350 reports per month” and dividing by “20–25k new implants/year” is not a time-to-failure curve. It’s a rough ratio of adverse reports to new implants, ignoring that:
• Many failures are of older devices implanted years ago.
• The at-risk population is cumulative (hundreds of thousands of men with implants in situ).
• Revisions may be for infection, erosion, or surgical error, not just mechanical wear.

3. True time-to-failure looks different.
In proper survival analyses:
• Griggs et al. (2025): Median time to failure ~48 months for Boston devices, ~41 months for Coloplast. Failures were mainly cylinder ruptures, pump failures, or tubing fractures.
• Other long-term series: 85–95% survival at 3–5 years, 60–85% survival at 10 years.
That’s a gradual attrition curve, not a sudden 20–30% annual wipeout.

4. Why the fish-in-pond analogy breaks down.
If you only look at the “fish floating on the surface” (visible failures), you’re ignoring the vast majority still swimming.
To calculate time-to-failure properly, you need to know how many fish were in the pond to begin with, how long they swam, and when they died. MAUDE doesn’t give that.

Bottom line: Saying “I’m only looking at time to failure” doesn’t fix the problem. Without structured survival data, you can’t infer median failure times or annual rates. The only valid way to do that is through published survival analyses; and those consistently show a very different picture than the 20–30% yearly failure claim.

That said, I do want to acknowledge your concerns. It’s valid to be skeptical and to keep pushing for better data, especially for younger men who may face multiple revisions over a lifetime. Raising questions about reliability helps keep the discussion honest and motivates manufacturers and surgeons to improve. Please do keep looking critically at the evidence; just know that we need to ground those concerns in survival-curve data rather than raw adverse-event counts, or the picture can look more dire than it actually is.

[Courage]

I do feel strongly about misunderstanding, misinterpretation or misuse of statistical methodology. This is much too common nowadays and can be seen across the internet, media, politics and even peer reviewed research.

Applause.

cartoon-concept-of-clapping-hands-vector.jpg

[PowerliftingDad]

I've seen a lot of recent posts concerned about lifespan. I just wanted to bump this up for those that haven't seen it.

[Cololovin]

I've seen a lot of recent posts concerned about lifespa. I just wanted to bump this up for those that haven't seen it.

Yeah powerdaddy...teach us how to live day by day and not think about tomorrow at all...yesterday I bought a car for 30k..had the sweetest ride of my life...today it just went kaput...but I ain't mad...I even let the sales man as well as the previous car owner to fuck me for giving me the shitty car I paid for.

[PowerliftingDad]

I've seen a lot of recent posts concerned about lifespa. I just wanted to bump this up for those that haven't seen it.

Yeah powerdaddy...teach us how to live day by day and not think about tomorrow at all...yesterday I bought a car for 30k..had the sweetest ride of my life...today it just went kaput...but I ain't mad...I even let the sales man as well as the previous car owner to fuck me for giving me the shitty car I paid for.

Would worrying about have made any difference?
Changed the outcome in any way?

I assume you're gonna handle your situation and get it worked out right? Or are you gonna walk everywhere you go?

[Cololovin]

I've seen a lot of recent posts concerned about lifespa. I just wanted to bump this up for those that haven't seen it.

Yeah powerdaddy...teach us how to live day by day and not think about tomorrow at all...yesterday I bought a car for 30k..had the sweetest ride of my life...today it just went kaput...but I ain't mad...I even let the sales man as well as the previous car owner to fuck me for giving me the shitty car I paid for.

Would worrying about have made any difference?
Changed the outcome in any way?

I assume you're gonna handle your situation and get it worked out right? Or are you gonna walk everywhere you go?

I respect you are resuming this as a healthy debate.

First of all lets just agree that "worrying" is not modifiable..I can't tell myself not to worry and then voilà...yes your post about life can turn upside down in a blink of an eye or vice versa might comfort me a bit for a day or two...but afterwards certainly worry will creep in back again. What is modifiable though is the causes of this worry..and I don't think you would disagree that implant reliability is one.
What I would do after my car failing ? I will certainly not guve a good feedback on a forum for cars and will definitely not boast the car company or the guy who sold me the car...and I won't excuse them by saying I'm just one of the extreme minority where everyone in my neighbourhood who bought it got problems..mostly related to reliability....I don't think if I persist in delivering positive feedback even after my 4th car of the same model, the car company would give a damn about R&D to prolong that car's lifespan.

Worrying is integral to living...worrying is actually healthy and progressive..what is not good excessive worrying which is anxiety...HOWEVER, anxiety consitiutes unreasonable worrying or worrying out of no where...and that's not the case with Ipps...when almost every implantee reported to this site as a virgin case (before implanting) got a failure within a few years...a huge chunk within 1 to 2 yrs.
And why is that worrying ?...especially for young guys who are starting families...it is because repeated revisions will inevitably result in infections that very probably may result in penis shrinkage and ultimately end-stage penis where the penis is no longer implantable...not to mention financial and emotional burden throughout revisions...Many men can't stand the fact that their sex life ends so early in marriage where they will have to tell wife : sorry my penis gone kaput..I can buy you either a vibrator or Im ok you fucking behind my back...or saying goodbye to a 5 year old daughter cause you can't bear life impotent.
You yourself got a failure so early and chose to raise your daughters as a celibate which i truely admire (you know me I don't asskiss) but we can't generalize such such a strong attitude...some men will survive some men wouldn't bear it.

How do we solve that ? Not by clicking the worry button off because there isn't one unfortunately....the solution to that is to simply provide a proper feedback and force companies to fix the problem and that we get what we pay for....atleast to have the dignity of an informed consent.

That's my take and we can agree to disagree on that..but no one has the right to defame a criticizer as a troll or fear mongerer.

[GoodWood]

Yeah powerdaddy...teach us how to live day by day and not think about tomorrow at all...yesterday I bought a car for 30k..had the sweetest ride of my life...today it just went kaput...but I ain't mad...I even let the sales man as well as the previous car owner to fuck me for giving me the shitty car I paid for.

Would worrying about have made any difference?
Changed the outcome in any way?

I assume you're gonna handle your situation and get it worked out right? Or are you gonna walk everywhere you go?

I respect you are resuming this as a healthy debate.

First of all lets just agree that "worrying" is not modifiable..I can't tell myself not to worry and then voilà...yes your post about life can turn upside down in a blink of an eye or vice versa might comfort me a bit for a day or two...but afterwards certainly worry will creep in back again. What is modifiable though is the causes of this worry..and I don't think you would disagree that implant reliability is one.
What I would do after my car failing ? I will certainly not guve a good feedback on a forum for cars and will definitely not boast the car company or the guy who sold me the car...and I won't excuse them by saying I'm just one of the extreme minority where everyone in my neighbourhood who bought it got problems..mostly related to reliability....I don't think if I persist in delivering positive feedback even after my 4th car of the same model, the car company would give a damn about R&D to prolong that car's lifespan.

Worrying is integral to living...worrying is actually healthy and progressive..what is not good excessive worrying which is anxiety...HOWEVER, anxiety consitiutes unreasonable worrying or worrying out of no where...and that's not the case with Ipps...when almost every implantee reported to this site as a virgin case (before implanting) got a failure within a few years...a huge chunk within 1 to 2 yrs.
And why is that worrying ?...especially for young guys who are starting families...it is because repeated revisions will inevitably result in infections that very probably may result in penis shrinkage and ultimately end-stage penis where the penis is no longer implantable...not to mention financial and emotional burden throughout revisions...Many men can't stand the fact that their sex life ends so early in marriage where they will have to tell wife : sorry my penis gone kaput..I can buy you either a vibrator or Im ok you fucking behind my back...or saying goodbye to a 5 year old daughter cause you can't bear life impotent.
You yourself got a failure so early and chose to raise your daughters as a celibate which i truely admire (you know me I don't asskiss) but we can't generalize such such a strong attitude...some men will survive some men wouldn't bear it.

How do we solve that ? Not by clicking the worry button off because there isn't one unfortunately....the solution to that is to simply provide a proper feedback and force companies to fix the problem and that we get what we pay for....atleast to have the dignity of an informed consent.

That's my take and we can agree to disagree on that..but no one has the right to defame a criticizer as a troll or fear mongerer.

I see this a bit differently.

First, I do think worrying is modifiable. Entire fields like psychiatry and psychology focus on helping people manage and reduce excessive worry. Nearly every major religion also teaches ways to let go of unnecessary worry, and even the self-help world has plenty to say about managing it.

That said, I agree with you that worry can serve a healthy purpose when it’s proportional to the risk. If you’re in the jungle, it makes sense to worry about a large snake. If you’re sitting in an office, probably not. I think the real question in this discussion is what level of concern is reasonable when it comes to IPPs.

I may be misunderstanding your point, but are you suggesting that all IPPs fail within a few years, with a large number failing within 1–2 years? If that’s what you mean, I’d be interested in seeing documentation supporting that claim. If not, then I may simply be interpreting your comment incorrectly.

It’s certainly true that many men who post on FT have experienced failures. But the men who post on a forum like this aren’t necessarily representative of all men who receive implants. People who are having problems are naturally more likely to seek out and post on forums than those who are doing well.

Another point that often comes up is the idea that each revision increases infection risk until it eventually becomes inevitable. While it’s true that a revision generally carries more risk than the initial surgery, the idea that repeated revisions inevitably lead to infection isn’t supported by evidence. My understanding is that the risk increases with the first revision but then tends to level off rather than continually climbing with each subsequent procedure.

As an example from another area of medicine, I’ve had a cardiac defibrillator since I was young and I’m now on my third device. Based on battery life, I expect to need a fourth in a couple of years and likely several more over my lifetime. The risk associated with revisions hasn’t been described to me as increasing indefinitely; rather, it stabilizes after the first replacement. Infection is a risk, but it’s certainly not inevitable.

Disagreement is part of healthy discussion, and some of the most interesting threads here come from people seeing things from different perspectives. I try to assume good intent from everyone who posts.

When the term “troll” gets used, it’s usually not simply because someone disagrees. It’s typically because the tone of a post comes across as mocking, belittling, or intentionally provocative. For example, the opening of your reply to powerdaddy reads that way to me.

On another note, I completely agree that there is still room for improvement with IPPs. I do believe the manufacturers are trying to improve the devices, but progress takes time. Stronger tubing would be welcome, and I also think having more cylinder diameter options would help. I ultimately chose a Titan largely to avoid losing girth. I might have preferred the more natural flaccid state of the LGX, but the diameter options didn’t work as well for me. If LGX cylinders were available in larger diameters, I might have seriously considered them.

Medical devices do improve over time. Using my defibrillator as an example again: my first device, implanted in 2001, was larger than a deck of cards and the battery lasted about seven years. My current device is less than half that size and is projected to last around eleven years. I’m told the newest models are even smaller and may last close to fifteen years.

I hope my IPP lasts many years. Realistically, though, it will eventually fail. I’m 57 and intend to remain sexually active for a long time. When the device eventually needs replacement, I’ll look at the best available technology at that time, research the most experienced surgeons, and get the revision done so I can get back to enjoying life.