Titan Failures on FrankTalk: User-Reported Time to Failure (through Nov 10, 2025)

[NYCGay]

Hey, what was the nature of your device failure? Tubing fracture?

Yup, tubing fracture.

[NYCGay]

One idea: if we accept the (biased) pattern often mentioned here, that once guys are implanted and doing well they drift away from FrankTalk and usually only return if problems arise (that was my case too), then we can treat users who reported an implant but never reported a revision/failure/infection/etc as still having a functioning device. This is a strong and biased assumption since some users with problems may not come back to report them, but it'd give us a workable denominator to estimate (biased) survival. It would take some time to datamine those reports in a reasonable way, but it would be a first pass at a survival curve with wide, bias-aware uncertainty for device failure and surgical outcomes. I’m probably missing a lot of things.

Your assumption sounds reasonable: that if someone has reported getting an implant and not reported having a failure, then he (probably) still has a functioning device. But of course we won't know just how close to reality the assumption actually is. Does Coloplast publish any numbers about the mean or median age of implants when they break? I assume it's something they try to gather data on.

One statistic that I would find interesting is a comparison between time to failure for different models: the OTR vs. the Classic. I see no obvious reason why those with one model would be more likely to report their failures than those with the other one, so such a comparison should give a strong indication of which model is more durable.

[principles]

My doctor helped publish this study recently and thought I'd post it for discussion.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40197751/

An exerp from the study:

Results: We identified a total of 410 cases: 220 BSCI and 190 CP devices. One hundred twenty-nine were revisions. Seventy-two met the inclusion criteria (63 BSCI and 9 CP). BSCI mechanical failures included: cylinder rupture, 26/63 (41.3%), tubing fracture, 7/63 (11.1%), reservoir rupture, 3/63 (4.8%), cylinder aneurysm, 6/63 (9.5%), and pump failure, 21/63 (33.3%). Coloplast mechanical failure included: tubing fracture 7/9 (77.8%), while reservoir rupture and cylinder aneurysm each were 1/9 (11.1%). Time to mechanical failure was a median of 48 and 41 months, respectively, for BSCI and CP devices.

My doctor told me at my last checkup that Coloplast is planning to change their tubing material to Bioflex, the same material as their cylinders, to reduce their failures. Can anyone else confirm this?

I don’t know what the inclusion criteria were for this study, but our Coloplast Titan sample is ~6.3x theirs.

[principles]

Your assumption sounds reasonable: that if someone has reported getting an implant and not reported having a failure, then he (probably) still has a functioning device. But of course we won't know just how close to reality the assumption actually is. Does Coloplast publish any numbers about the mean or median age of implants when they break? I assume it's something they try to gather data on.

One statistic that I would find interesting is a comparison between time to failure for different models: the OTR vs. the Classic. I see no obvious reason why those with one model would be more likely to report their failures than those with the other one, so such a comparison should give a strong indication of which model is more durable.

Definitely worth investigating as well. The main barrier though is the actual data. I gathered these events mostly manually. It took me a couple hours, and if you try that exercise yourself, you’ll see users’ revision/failure journals often don’t specify the pump model. To know that would require them to reply to a PM, and plenty are MIA (fucking around). The data is sparse, and the data we do manage to find is probably of insignificant statistical value.

[NYCGay]

The main barrier though is the actual data ... The data is sparse, and the data we do manage to find is probably of insignificant statistical value.

You're right: the data are very limited. It was still interesting to read about this project. I wish you the best of luck with it, if you decide to keep working on it, in whichever direction you might take it.

[ElbowRoom]

Hey, what was the nature of your device failure? Tubing fracture?

Yup, tubing fracture.

Fucking Titan tubes. If they would just fix that one issue, I think Coloplast could dominate the market. It’s otherwise super bullet-proof.