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DerbyDad03 DerbyDad03 is offline
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Default Screwing a broken ankle

On Nov 2, 8:10 pm, Smitty Two wrote:
In article . com,





DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Nov 2, 4:27 pm, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Nov 2, 4:07 pm, Smitty Two wrote:


In article ,
AZ Nomad wrote:


On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:49:50 -0400, Dan Espen
wrote:


Smitty Two writes:


In article ,
(Malcolm Hoar) wrote:


In article
,
Smitty Two wrote:
Yeah, but it does work well on skin! I recently discovered how
well when my 7 year old fell and made a nice gash on his nose
that I thought would need stitches. Off to the E.R. where they
stuck him back together with (medical grade) superglue. Within
about 10 days the would healed perfectly with no trace of a
scar. The Doc was right -- much better than stitches!


What's medical grade CA? Is that $3 dimestore glue that's been
repackaged and sold for $300? The standard stuff you have around
the
house works great for wounds.


Well, pretty much. Of course, the vendor probably had to
spend many millions getting FDA approval and satisfying
all kinds of requirements relating to manufacturing,
distribution, packaging, advertising and everything else.


Yeah. I dated an orthopedic surgeon for a while, and she swore that
the
bone screws cost $1800 per copy. I also know, first hand, how screws
are
made. Anyone wanna pony up some venture capital?


Sometimes Google satisfies, sometimes it doesn't.
I couldn't verify the cost of the screws you indicate above
but I did see some of the screws are stainless steel and
some are titanium.


$1800 does seem a bit steep, even for titanium.
I'd guess there's a very low volume and a lot
of inspections, including xrays of the part involved though.


I'd like to see smitty get his ankle smashed into a thousand pieces and
then
have his doc use some bigbox hardware store home construction screws.
After
all, all screws are the same.


I find it curious that you insist on being so irrational. When did I say
that all screws were the same? I didn't attack or insult you, all I did
was ask you to substantiate your claim that a surgical screw is as
different from a hardware store screw as a space rocket is from a bottle
rocket.


You're the one who claimed to have seen a surgical screw, and said it
was completely different. If you want me to believe that, you're going
to have to tell me in what ways it's different. There are one cent
screws and there are $20 screws. Have you ever made a screw? Seen one
being made? Now tell me what it is, exactly, that makes a surgical screw
worth $1800, outside of all the bureaucracy that's involved, as others
pointed out.


Incidentally, my mom shattered all the bones in her ankle in 1953.
Doctors said she'd never walk again, which she did, without the
slightest limp, for another forty years. I'm guessing there were no
$1800 screws involved, even adjusted for inflation.- Hide quoted text -


- Show quoted text -


I'm not taking sides here, but if you want to see the difference
between surgical screw and hardware store screw, scroll down to the
Screw section of this site. Just like there are many variations of
hardware store screws, there are many variations of surgical screws.
I'm guessing once we start talking about hollow-shaft screws, we are
talking about considerable added expense.


http://www.rad.washington.edu/mskboo...ware.html-Hide quoted
text -


- Show quoted text -


I scanned the site I mentioned earlier and went past the Screw
section, into the Plate section to find another screw that could be
pretty expensive. Here's the text that's under the pictu


...the medial malleolar fracture above is held together by one of
these screws, made of a radiolucent polycarbonate material, which is
designed to eventually be absorbed by the body -- this type of screw
is known locally as "stealth hardware"


I'm guessing Lowes doesn't carry these in those little drawers. ;-)


http://www.rad.washington.edu/mskboo...chardware.html


Interesting link, thanks. I like the design of the Herbert screw. Very
clever. Nothing too difficult about making any of those, though.
Drilling longitudinal holes is easy enough, and as far as the "stealth"
screw, I wouldn't classify polycarbonate (the stuff of throw-away picnic
glasses) as Unobtainium. I didn't see any notes on what metal(s) were
used on the other ones.

I also found it surprising that in some cases, drilling a pilot hole for
the screw can weaken the bone by as much as 90%.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


I also found it surprising that in some cases, drilling a pilot
hole for the screw can weaken the bone by as much as 90%

Without any context, that statistic doesn't tell us much. They can
say that in "some cases" there's a 90% weakening, even if 99.99% of
the pilot holes only weaken the bone by 10%. All you need is a few
cases at 90% and you can make an "in some cases" claim sound
frightening.

I was watching CNN the other day and they were talking about the huge
disparity in death sentences given to one race over another. However,
they never gave any statistics related to the number of capital crimes
committed by either race. I'm not saying there isn't a disparity, but
how can I tell if the reported ratio of means anything unless they
also tell me the ratio of crimes committed by the races involved?

Statistics only have meaning when you know the full story behind the
data.