<\/p>\n
Orthopaedic screws and plates are often used to allow broken bones to heal without malformation. But these kinds of surgical implants are impossibly expensive in developing countries. A single-use plate can easily cost three or four months wages.<\/p>\n
Yet it is also prohibited to re-use implants, even in the third world. It is a prohibition that is not in keeping with practice, because surgical steel is in actual fact illegally recycled on a huge scale in developing countries. <\/p>\n
A relatively high number of traffic accidents occur in Indonesia. Amputation is frequently the only solution if complicated bone fractures, often with bits of bone sticking out, cannot be treated with a (temporary) implanted steel plate.<\/p>\n
The Indonesian orthopaedic surgeon Rahadyan Magetsari has collaborated with technicians at the UMCG to research the reuse of implants.<\/p>\n
He has formulated several conditions that recycling should comply with. How often can implants be reused and how should the material be cleaned? Simple means such as a toothbrush, domestic bleach and scouring powder often already seem to be sufficient to remove all foreign tissue on the reusable implant.<\/p>\n