Limb lengthening with Fitbone

Thanks for your wishes!
Dr. Monegal knows all the different nails, and as he think Fitbone is the best, and he did explain me all the reasons why, I trust that Fitbone is the best.
So I guess I was just unlucky.

From all what I have studied I am still very convinced that Fitbone with Dr. Monegal is by far the best option, at least for those who are not on a very limited budget and therefore have to do external lengthening in a low cost country like India or Serbia with more pain and likely more complications.

Tomorrow, I meet a rep of Wittenstein and I will see if I get a similarly great response as I got from Dr. Monegal.

That's his opinion. I bet Dr Paley says Precise is the best and Dr Guichet says Gnail is the best and Dr Betz says Betzbone is the best. I trust those doctors more than your doctor but if you like that nail it's OK.
The only thing I know is this nail is giving problems to many people. You're not unlucky. The most unlucky person is the guy whose Fitbone failed and was threatened with external fixator and Musicmaker who had MANY faulty nails. There are many threads in this forum about Fitbone failures by Lluser and other members.
I wish you the best for your lengthening.

Quote from: notimportant on December 06, 2016, 04:36:00 PMThe most unlucky person is the guy whose Fitbone failed and was threatened with external fixator and Musicmaker who had MANY faulty nails. There are many threads in this forum about Fitbone failures by Lluser and other members.

You keep talking about yourself in third person...

Today I had a great meeting with people from Fitbone.
They took their time to get to know my case and they did admit that they do have fitbones failures at a rate of 0.3%, so around 12 people out of aprox. 4000 implants.

Musicmaker lives around 25 meters from my room, so I was able to know her case a little bit. She did have very, very bad luck but as far as I know she does not blame fitbone.

Maybe I am biased because all the patients that I talk to in person, I met her and of course they came to the same conclusion as I did, reinforcing my belief that Dr. Monegal and Fitbone are the best options.

Actually, I did meet a patient last week that had the femur lengthened by Guichet in France but then decided to switch to come to Barcelona for Tibia lengthening.

Guichet doesn't do tibia. I guess that's the reason. And price.

Implants fail then. Who is to be blamed when implants fail if Fitbone isn't? Doctor? Patient? I'm playing the devil's advocate. I'm not accusing anybody. There are some paranoid users here.

Good luck with your lengthening helloworld

I agree with you!
If a nail fails, and the doctor and the patient did nothing wrong, they are liable. This is true even though they were not negligent, because it is within their responsibility.

And in that case a nail fails, and a patient has to undergo another surgery, for the nail manufacturer to say "we will give you another one for free!" is a joke! That is like a builder, who builds a faulty house the crashes and leaves the inhabitants disabled saying: "Don't worry we will build you another house for free!"

What about all the cost the patient had in terms, of pain, additional rehab, lost work hours, and maybe even chronic damages?

I am a lawyer, but I really do not like to sue anybody nor argue with anybody. But when I get damages from a product failure, and this product was not a toy from China, but a precision medical product, I do except the manufacturer to offer me a reasonable compensation.

What is reasonable? In once case a women placed her McDonalds coffee in between her legs while driving and when it spilled she got burned. McDonals had made the coffee a few degrees too hot, so she was awarded 2.5 million USD! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants

I think this is an exaggeration. But I think at least the manufacturer of the nail should refrain from charging anything from that patient, or at least not for the leg with the failed bone. This is likly no cost at all to the nail manufacturer, as the material costs are a small fraction of the sales price. And as the failure rate is very low (with Fitbone 0.3%) there is really no cost at all for them to offer this to all their patients.

What do you guys think?

I totally agree with you, helloworld. If a nail fail, the manufacturer should offer a replacement at no cost. It is not only an ethical decision, and good for the patient (for obvious reasons) but also some good advertising for them with virtually no economic cost on the big picture.

However, in some cases the problem could be determining if the failure was caused by a faulty nail or by a bad decision / unlucky accident by the patient. I think it was Bohemia who said that a guy went alpine skiing while still lengthening and bent the nail. This is a very obvious (and possibly exaggerated) case, but I hope you get what I mean.

TO be clear Ozymandis: I am NOT saying the manufacturer should offer a free replacement!
Of course he should! But beyond that he should either pay either:
full consequential damages of the patient
or cover the full cost of operation
or at least cover the cost of the nail (and the replacement)!

Just offering a replacing nail, while the patient has to undergo additional surgery including pain, rehab, and lost work seems like a bad joke to me!

Of course they should offer a replacement and they should give it for free and they should compensate you and all people whose implants failed. If you pay such a large amount for your implants there is no legal way you are forced to pay again for them if they were faulty. From a lawyer's perspective they should compensate you with a large amount of money. Extra surgeries mean more long-term consequences. No amount of money is large enough to compensate for your suffering but money can help. We are talking about large sums of money.

I read there was one guy whose Fitbone failed and he was said he was being ex-fixed by that doctor of yours and he had to pay for an external fixator in addition to what he had already paid. That's crazy. If I were that guy I would sue Wittenstein for sure. Read the quotation below.

People must learn to admit their mistakes and pay for them. If the Fitbone is faulty, Fitbone must pay. If the doctor makes a mistake, he must pay. If the patient makes a mistake it's him who must pay. Each case must be studied in depth to determine who is to be blamed.

Quote from: LLuser1 on December 08, 2015, 12:10:54 AM
In October some prospective patients visited Dr Monegal’s center and met some actual patients. I have visited the center. Glenn described this tour in his diary. Everything seemed fine but the doctor didn’t tell all the truth to his future patients. He introduced these people to all his current patients but one girl who was also at the guesthouse and who has had very serious complications (Musicmaker??). This is for me a case of dishonesty. I learnt about this after my trip.

I can understand that this is a difficult surgery and sometimes things go wrong, but doctor said none of his patients had had complications which wasn’t true.

After the trip, I made some research. I asked some people (patients and people from the forum) and got to know that it’s not only this girl who had problems, but other people. It seems there is one American guy whose implant failed. Dr told him that he had to be exfixed and he had to pay around 7000 eur. Finally the company sent a free implant for him but it failed too and he had to go to OR again. It isn’t about money but about all the trauma and suffering for that guy. It seems he hasn’t been compensated.