In an earlier post I reported that I had undergone revision to a THR, because my ion levels were very high â€" 2265 for cobalt and 1219 for chrome.
I have just had the results of the metals test done 7 weeks after revision surgery. I am very relieved to have been told that the levels have dropped significantly to 153 and 165 respectively. Clearly there is still some way to go, but this is a great start, and makes me very glad I had the revision.
Great news and good information - thanks for sharing that, I had wondered about how quickly your body excises the ions.
Following on from my earlier post about clearing metal ions from the system after revision surgery, I have just received the results of the metals test done six months after the revision surgery. The pattern was as follows:
Prior to surgery 6 weeks after 6 months after
Cobalt 2265 153 38
Chromium 1219 165 98
The levels are therefore continuing to drop though less rapidly than in the first six weeks. It is also of note that while the chromium levels never went as high as the cobalt levels, they are also clearing more slowly.
Hope this is of interest to others who may be going through a revision surgery to clear metal ions.
Hi JMS,
Could you please give us what was the unit used (is it µg/liter ?) for your metal tests ?
Thanks
Hi JMS,
Many thanks for your post re the clearing of metal in blood.
It is reassuring to know how quickly it can clear after surgery.
Hopefully my surgery to THR is 20th September, barring cancellations.
I wish you well
JMS - thanks for the info. I think you'll continue to see a decline. I have heard that it is a slower decrease as you get farther past revision. I haven't read all the papers you recommended. If I had, I may well be better suited to speculate on the trends you're seeing.
Parts per billion is a very common unit when talking about metals toxicity in humans, at least for chronic exposures. Also metals analysis in aqueous media is often in the ppb range.
Thanks Tin Soldier. Re your earlier comment about the rate of decline, I don't know if you have seen the material that Vicky posted with the responses to patient questions from the Scottsdale Conference. One of the responders there claims that the vast majority of the drop happens in the first week after surgery, which would make sense, in relation to my experience.
My next metals test will be in three months, so I will post those numbers too, and see if we can paste a curve for others to compare against.
If I recall correctly, you are up for surgery in just a few days? very best of luck with it - and thanks for all the good evidence-based info you have been posting.
Daylily, all good wishes for your surgery next month. I hope your levels drop as rapidly as mine did.
I did grab that article that Vicky posted. Got about halfway through and got busy stewing about surgery. I'm getting back into it and will read up. I also want to catch up on the latest misinformation presented in the NY Times article.
Thanks for the support.
Hey - have you read the Metals Defense Protocal paper from 2002, by Brewster? I believe. Anyway he gets into chelating compounds and other ways of trying to eliminate the metals from your blood. Being in the environmental field, I see a lot of talk about that sort of thing with heavy metals and also a healthy dose of debate about it's validity. If you can't find the article let me know, I'll look to see where I found it. Maybe you send it to me :-\
I had a BHR fitted in February 2001. It was brilliant, I got my life back and enjoyed going to the gym four times a week.
However, halfway through 2003 I started to feel poorly which is highly unusual for me as I had always enjoyed an excellent health record. I ended up being admitted to hospital as an emergency in November 2003 with Erythema Nodosum an autoimmune disease. I eventually was prescribed steroids and eventually my huge legs gradually slimmed back down.
Following this though I never recaptured the energy I had previously enjoyed and started to experience pain in my operated hip.
I returned to my consultant who X-rayed the hip and said everything seemed fine. It was unfortunate though that I was not in constant pain and each time I had an appointment it seemed I never had the pain. However, as time went on more tests were carried out such as an isotope bone Scan and ultrasound scan where it was discovered that there was a large mass of fluid collected around the joint but it was decided that it would be too dangerous to aspirate.
My consultant then made a reference to a reaction to the metal and suggested changing the hip for a THR. Reluctant to go through surgery again I asked whether it would make any difference if I deferred this treatment for a while and he said that it would make no difference.
I tried to continue my life but the pain was becoming worse and worse, climbing stairs became very painful and if I knocked my foot the pain in the hip was excruciating. Sometimes I didn't dare stop walking as the pain became so severe it was difficult to get going again.
I then decided enough was enough to tried to see my consultant again but unfortunately he was on long term sick leave so I then went to my GP for advice. He referred me to someone else who I saw early in 2007. Upon looking at my X-ray he told me that the hip had been correctly fitted but that it wasn't right for my anatomy (congenital disclocation) and that he would revise it to a ceramic cad-cam hip.
The revision was carried out in April 2007 following which he told me that he had discovered extensive tissue damage and that the bone, surrounding tissue had all gone black and died and that furthermore it had poisoned my whole system. I did ask specifically whether the Erythema Nodosum was connected as it had always been much worse in the operated leg but he said no.
I now was much better that before the revision but I have never been pain free and never regained the energy and have never been able to return to work. We moved to the country and now have a new GP who carried our cobalt chromium blood tests despite the fact that the metal hip was removed four years ago. The test has come back high for chromium and I am now being referred to a toxicologist.
I am so sorry to hear this, but thank you for sharing your story. Hopefully it will help others in the same position. I hope that you get some relief soon.
June
Sorry to hear that, Linnett. I suspect that the metals will drop pretty rapidly, but then I have no idea how that relates to the erethema. I bet the toxicologist will be able to provide some answers. Good Luck!
Quote from: Tin Soldier on August 27, 2011, 06:35:15 PM
I did grab that article that Vicky posted. Got about halfway through and got busy stewing about surgery. I'm getting back into it and will read up. I also want to catch up on the latest misinformation presented in the NY Times article.
Thanks for the support.
Hey - have you read the Metals Defense Protocal paper from 2002, by Brewster? I believe. Anyway he gets into chelating compounds and other ways of trying to eliminate the metals from your blood. Being in the environmental field, I see a lot of talk about that sort of thing with heavy metals and also a healthy dose of debate about it's validity. If you can't find the article let me know, I'll look to see where I found it. Maybe you send it to me :-\
Hi Tin Soldier
Thanks for the reference to the Brewster paper. I didn't know about it previously but was able to find it easily from your info. (Download is available at www.activejoints.com/MetalDef.pdf if others are looking for it.) Very interesting to see him approach it from the nutritional standpoint etc. Funny, in the pre-surgery days when everyday had to start with a Celebrex, I automatically took some anti-oxidants and the like at the same time. Since the first surgery and being pain free, I forget all about taking pills. Seems like I got the timing badly wrong, when I think back on it.
Re the chelating agents, I did ask my surgeon about it. His feeling was that so long as my kidneys were healthy, I should have no problem clearing the metals on my own, once the source was removed. But I think established medicine tends to look askance at chelation anyway, unless there is an immediate poisoning risk.
But taking the anti-oxidants is surely a safe step - am off to check the expiry date on all those bottles sitting forgotten on the shelf! Thanks.
Goodpoint about the chelating compounds. I agree it does not seem to be accepted much in the medical community. I wonder how much our bodies are able to deal with heavy metals anyway, like your doc says, given healthy filter organs. Think about paleo man and how much soil they incidentally ingested from eating grubs and roots and such. It's mostly going to be Fe, but what about the other minor amounts of heavy metals? With our current standards for food and water, I think we ingest way less metals than we used to.
My chromium blood level is high four years after the metal implant was removed.
I am the third person at my GP surgery with this problem and the others are all complaining that they have no energy, flu like symptoms etc.
I am not sure the body can rid itself of chromium though I believe it can cobalt; my cobalt level was not too high only the chromium.
Two things I noted from the time everything began to go wrong was that the skin on my arms became mottled with brown spots and my tongue has a yellow fur coat on it. I have tried everything to clear my tongue but to no avail, can only believe it is associated with the high levels of chromium.
It would be interesting to hear what the tox has to say. I really think they ought to be able to explain Cr and Co toxicity and how the body rids itself of those metals and how they affect the body. People take pretty high doses of Cr as a health suppliment and the EPA has a pretty high standard for ingestion of water with Cr (III). Based on historical toxicology, EPA says they wouldn't expect to see health effects if you drank water, every day, with Cr(III) at a concentration of 55 mg/L (55,000 ug/L) for 30 years. That's a high concentration. Most blood or serum results are in the 10 or so ug/L range. Certainly it would be different for Cr(VI) which is a toxic form that was been well documented at industrial cleanup sites, but Cr(VI) is not found in relation to MoM hips because of the pH and oxidation state within the human body.
Again, sorry to hear about this. I hope you can get some answers from your doc/s.
Thanks, I hope so too but I don't think much is known about it to not sure what approach they will take.
More worryingly though is that my operated leg is still painful. I know that the metallosis destroyed so much bone and tissue and can only assume that the pain is a result of that.
I will also need to get it checked out as a small part of me wonders whether it is possible that if a minute amount of necrotic tissue wasn't removed that it could carry on causing further damage? I can't quite believe it could but then I would never have believed that the BHR could have caused so much damage in the first place.
It has to be borne in mind that the BHR wasn't removed until 2007, six years from when it was implanted and four years after the first symptoms of what transpired to be metallosis.
Hi all,
Had my revision operation 2 weeks ago, feeling great even though none weight bearing because of bone graft.
I've been reading all the posts on this thread and know the kidneys filter the ions out of the bloodstream.
Would this explain my excessive urination during the night? I cannot find another logical reason for having to get up 5-6 times a night, it's exhausting!!!!!
Any help appreciated thanks.
It's also very common to have a great deal of inflammation and water retention after surgery, so possibly you are just draining this extra fluid as your body returns to normal?
Lots of folks on here mention the frequent urination for a couple weeks post op and they generally suggest it to be related to everything associated with surgery as JMS points out.
when I had my hip resurfacing, I had to get up to pee every hour or so during the night for the first couple of weeks.
I think the pain meds cause fluid retention. As I said on this site and my blog I happen to weigh right after I got home from the hospital and the next morning. I had lost 8 pounds (almost a gallon) of fluid overnight. It took several days but I was pretty much back to normal about the time I quit taking the Oxycontin.
Dan
Following on from earlier posts about clearing metal ions from the system after revision surgery, these are the results of the most recent metals test done ten months after the revision surgery. I will post the whole series for comparison purposes.
Prior to surgery 6 weeks after 6 months after 10 months after
Cobalt 2265 153 38.2 36.7
Chromium 1219 165 98.3 64.2
Cobalt appears to be leveling off, and chromium is continuing to drop.
Hi cwg
So sorry to hear that you have these additional worries. No wonder you are feeling stressed. Best of luck with the ultrasound next week, and let us know how you get on.
j.
I am most interested in post #14 by linnett. She mentioned symptoms of fatigue, lack of energy which is exactly what has happened to me. I have not visited surfacehippy for a long time now as I was one of the successful ones who had no pain and my resurfacing a success. Or so I thought. I had had a few symptoms of mild chronic fatigue before surgery. They were reoccurring under times of stress. But I felt in great shape when I went to Belgium to have BHR implant in November 2005. I had been training hard with my Pilates trainer who also had gone to Dr. de Smet and was really in the best shape of my life. However, within months of surgery the Chronic Fatigue returned and from that time has been an ongoing problem. I had to quit Pilates, quit much exercise at all. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction and had various treatments - anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal as the general consensus of thought is that this disease is caused by under - lying infections. I have had no improvement. I did have slight and occasional soreness around operated hip joint but so very mild. I did go to an excellent orthopedic surgeon at the famous Stedman Hawkins Clinic in Vail, Colorado to get it checked along with other issues. He told me that it was normal to feel some soreness around an implant. The soft tissue doesn't like it as well as natural bone. The x- rays looked fine and he said all was well with hip resurfacing.
Finally this year after feeling sicker than ever and reading so much about metal toxicity with de Puy etc. I decided to have my cobalt and chromium tested. I am confused by the differing numbers of the results I have read about. Mine were done supposedly using the correct procedure and vials etc. and were sent to the Mayo Clinic Lab for testing. The Chromium was elevated at 1.0 ng/mL with a reference of<0.3. My cobalt only slightly elevated at again 1.0 with a normal reference range of 0.0 - 0.9.
Does this number seem excessively high for chromium? Has anyone else felt the symptoms of fatigue lack of energy, I also have coated tongue. Could the chromium perhaps be at the root of
my illness? Sorry to be so long winded. I would really appreciate anyone's ideas or help with this matter. I am considering going to the Mayo clinic in Scottsdale for an evaluation.
p.s. I noticed I was taking an large amount of chromium in my special Energy Revitalization vitamin. Have quit that immediately. Have no idea if this can make an impact. It say 167% of
daily requirement at 200 mcg!!!
p.s.s. I had my IGE serum tested and it showed normal meaning I have no allergic response.
Stingley, your levels are fine.. I'm pretty sure. Certainly lower than mine, and definitely much lower than those here with the giant ones like JMS
Ease your mind and go for evaluations anywhere you are covered or can afford
Stress just adds nonsense to the body- go ease your mind
Report back