Postby MikeAN » Sun Aug 06, 2017 7:57 am
All materials subjected to cyclic stress will experience fatigue and failure. This is true for metals and plastics/polymers. There is an interesting infographic put out by Coloplast that compares the Titan to the competitor (AMS) where cycles to failure are listed. The document states that the Titan is more durable and capable of 6.5 Million+ Cycles (inflation and deflation) to material failure, while the competitor is only capable of 1.5-2 Million Cycles. Actually both of these numbers are quite high. Taking 1.5 million as the fatigue lifetime limit and assuming that you cycle your implant 3 times a day, failure would take 1,370 years!! Of course, there are a number of other things to consider, and as Alibaba noted, plastics age so their properties become degraded over time, shortening the lifetime. Let's say that aging cuts the time to failure in half; this would suggest failure in 685 years. My suggestion is not to worry about abusing it and just use it.
https://www.coloplastmd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/PM00479-Titan-Bioflex-Infographic.pdf
1950. Implanted November 1st 2017 by Dr Andrew Kramer with Titian 22cm + 2cm RTE. Pump relocated and replace with Classic pump Jan. 24th, 2018. Pump failure 12/18, Replaced 2/13/19 by Dr Kramer. Revision by Dr Clavell, Feb 28, 2024.