This month (August) the Society for Biomaterials is sponsoring a Symposium on Retrieval and Analysis of Surgical Implants. Concurrently, the present issue of the Applied Biornaterials Section is devoted to this important area: Dan Daniels contributes a thought-provoking guest editorial on the subject; Naser Salman and D. Coleman Richardson devote the Medical Device News Corner to this topic; and the complete program of the Symposium is printed herein. In a future issue, we hope to publish several papers resulting from the Symposium.
The major objectives of the Symposium are to enhance our knowledge of biomaterial-tissue interactions and to facilitate surgical implant development. The contributions address laboratory methods, the results of retrieved implant analysis, and clinical logistics. All of us in the biomaterials community should be concerned with the "pathology of implants." It is only through this mechanism that we can determine the relative success of our efforts. Unfortunately, the source of much valuable data is currently being discarded. For example, at my own institution, where 10% to 20% of the 8700 orthopaedic procedures performed each year involve the explantation of a device, very few of the devices are properly analyzed. There is no doubt that we must learn to deal with the legal, regulatory, ethical, and economic issues associated with device retrieval and make it a routine activity in every hospital.