I am now 11 years out on my first hip, and just over 1 year on the second. All is going very well, with a very active life including daily skiing during the winter, and daily sports of surfing, windsurfing, and tennis during the summers. I have very minor soft tissue soreness around the surgical site of the 11 year old hip, which I suspect is minor soft tissue reaction to metal ions, which happily had a blood count of less than 1 at the last test for that one hip.
In thinking about metal ions in general after MOM joint replacements, I wondered if there might be some sort of chelation therapy to help capture and excrete excess cobalt and chromium from our systems, which might become a standard therapy for anyone with MOM joints, much like taking vitamins for general health.
My wife found this report, which exactly addresses my question. Obviously, two patients does not make it a meaningful study, but none-the-less it might be of interest to anyone with MOM joints.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crior/2016/8682737/ (https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crior/2016/8682737/)
Very interesting, John C. Thanks for the info.
Very interesting John, thanks for the post.
That’s encouraging, particularly for the possible situation where one may be facing possible revision surgery only because of elevated ion levels, and there’s no other problem related to the hardware. If it were me, I would definitely be up for a mucomyst trial first, just to see if it makes any difference. Aside from the foul taste, I don’t see a down side to giving it a shot.
Even if it works though, I guess it would be advisable in to regularly measure the ion levels after that too, in case the levels spike again......