Robert Whitfield MD discusses why infections around implants stay hidden. A pathology report revealed E. coli in his sister's implant despite no clinical signs. Current scans miss low-grade infections unless redness or swelling shows up.
E. Coli
April 9, 2025
And if it's infected, you want to keep that inside the scar tissue around the implant itself. If it's got recurrent cancer, you got to send all these things off to make sure that's not the case for the patients. Of course. And at a week, she didn't have any recurrent cancer on her screen you for that, which is the pathology report. But on the report to look for an infection, she did. She had an E. Coli infection.
Ooh.
And so my sister, who recently passed away after a long bout with breast cancer and recurrences and things, I would have been supremely pissed off if someone had missed that on my sister. So I went back through all of my records and notes, and no indication of this. And this kind of goes to the limitation of this. So if someone has an implant that actually has bacteria around it, we have no way of knowing.
That, really. So there's no scans or anything that can detect.
Now, if it's not frankly, infected, like, you don't show up, and you have red skin or swelling or something that tip us off that will show up on a diagnostic study, there's no way to really alert you that there's underlying chronic infection. And.
