Hardware in orthopedic surgery.

Insertion of foreign material into the human body has been performed with increasing frequency during the past 50 years and has received added encouragement in the antimicrobial era. Nevertheless, no matter how rational the utilization of these inflexible foreign bodies may seem, their introduction into the human framework is accompanied by evidence of nature's intolerance to hardware when substituted for living tissue. Numerous surgical complications occur following the use of internal fixation and prosthetic devices in orthopedic surgery.