It is important that patients have a detailed record of every medical device implanted in their body. That’s why every breast implant patient is given a card with all the details of their implant, we keep it on record in the office, and it is kept on file with the device manufacturer. That’s a system that has a double back-up.
Just because we have the technology to encode electronic information does not make it necessary. Not only is it not expensive, but any such technology itself introduces risks to the durability of implants. Even something as simple as thickening or reinforcing one area to hold the device in place risks causing failures at the margins of those reinforcements. Nearly every effort to do so on an implant in the past eventually led to an increased rate of early failure. At best it would take decades to know that this wouldn’t happen.
KISS: take your device card, make a couple of Xeroxes, and put it in a couple of safe places in the house. Done.
