What Do We Use Titanium for in Everyday Life?

In 2011, I was with my dad when he fell 25 feet off of a climbing wall at our health club.

I watched both his legs break due to a belay malfunction, and I watched the ambulance carry him away. That night, my family and I didn’t know if he would ever walk again. In fact, we didn’t even know if he would survive.

He was in ICU for three days, where they determined there was no internal bleeding, and he wouldn’t die. They still had to perform surgery on his shattered legs though, and they decided the best course of action would be to put titanium rods and screws in his legs, the bars being much stronger than his healing bones, and that the titanium may better enable him to walk again. He spent six weeks in the hospital, every day going to physical therapy to try and regain the leg strength he lost. When he was released, he was still in a wheelchair, but the doctors had hope that he would walk again, due to the rods holding his bones in place and making it so they healed correctly. The use of titanium was and still sort of is a mystery to me, but I do know that using it to reinforce his bones would better make sure they would heal straight, and it would make his legs stronger as they healed, enabling him to do physical therapy and hopefully gain back his strength.

Before the accident, my dad had been quite an athlete. Him, my brother and I all used to speed skate. He did a ton of road and mountain biking, and he loved to climb. Afterwards, the doctors were honest, and they told him they doubted his body would be able to sustain such an athletic lifestyle anymore. His bones just wouldn’t be able to take it. As the healing process went on though, he started to gain some of those skills back. He didn’t have as much stamina as he used to, but as the months went on, he gained more and more, and he started going speedskating again every week, and biking whenever he could. 

I really am not an expert on titanium metal. I know it’s a very strong metal, and I know my dad has 2 titanium rods of it in his legs. Other than that, I’m not incredibly educated about it, but I can’t help but be thankful that it was able to be used in medical procedures, namely the one that helped heal my dad. I hope that more people get to use these scientific advances in materials to help get their lives back like my dad did.

For more information, please visit http://www.samaterials.com/