More and more medical clinics offer implanting payment implants

The latest innovative solution for contactless payments, the subdermal implant of the British company Walletmor, is rapidly gaining Poles interest. Following the curiosity of the media, banks and potential customers - users, a nationwide network of surgeries cooperating with Walletmor, ready to receive people interested in implantation is growing. According to the doctors, the procedure itself, performed in hygienic conditions, is safe, swift and painless.

– Every day we receive several phone calls from all over Poland asking about the implant and where it can be performed. The interest is so great that currently the queue of waiting clients in our country is several dozen people. Putting it jokingly, if you compared the financial market to the food market, we managed to enter the traction similar of the "Ekipa" ice cream. And this is just the beginning', - rejoices Wojciech Paprota, the founder of the start-up responsible for constructing the world's first payment implant.

Currently, Walletmor implantation can be performed in 11 recommended centers throughout the country, most of which are located in provincial cities. Although the procedure itself is not complicated, the manufacturer recommends that the implantation be performed by a specialist. - We do not recommend performing the implantation yourself, mainly due to the need to maintain sterility. Doctor's offices, but also professional cosmetology and piercing studios, are sanitary enough for skin incision procedures - adds Wojciech Paprota. 

One of the recommended doctors cooperating with Walletmor is an orthopedic specialist, Szymon Manasterski, MD, who works at two clinics in Wrocław. – I strongly recommend having this procedure performed by a professional. Why? The reason is prosaic. Apart from having the right equipment and skills to ensure sterile conditions, implantation by someone else, rather than by yourself, is simply more comfortable. The implant is usually placed in your left hand. This is done under local anesthesia. By performing this procedure on ourselves, we are left with only the other hand to do all the work, including stitching the wound. Although the medical procedure is not overly complicated, the procedure, performed alone, with one hand, would be on the verge of surgical acrobatics – explains Dr Szymon Manasterski. 

– Placing an implant is a relatively safe procedure. The implant being less than one millimeter, it’s thickness, and flexibility being some among other reasons. Technically speaking, with knowledge of the anatomy and correct tissue incision, the odds of possible complications is as low as with piercing for an earring. The skin incision for the implant is very small and usually 7 millimeters long. Once the implant is in place, a single vertical mattress suture is placed. The implant procedure itself is very short. It takes 4 minutes from the incision to the suturing of the skin. However, you need to add the time for local anesthesia. Although the anesthetic is active already after a few seconds ensuring painlessness, in our procedure we also use addition of adrenaline, which makes the procedure almost bloodless. However, in order for the adrenaline to work properly, 20 minutes is required after the skin is anesthetized. After taking that into account, the entire implantation takes just over 25 minutes – details Dr Szymon Manasterski.

The healing process will continue for a few days after implantation, but care of the area is simple and usual due to its undisturbed localization (outer part of the hand near the fifth metacarpal bone). Walletmor recommends that you do not wear tight gloves (e.g. gardening gloves) for too long after the surgery, and that you do not engage in strenuous training.

– So far, several years of experience from the USA, Poland, and other countries which Walletmor shared with me, do not indicate any complications or allergies in patients with this type of implant For Walletmor, a biocompatible material technique that meets ISO10993 standards was used. It is a substance that behaves similarly to silicone in the patient's body. Please remember that in modern medicine we have a large group of implantable materials in the human body. Examples include pacemakers, subcutaneous hearing aids, catheters in the urinary tract, and valves. The individual elements of these devices, embedded in bio-inert materials, do not usually cause adverse reactions in millions of patients with this type of implant worldwide. However, if the patient has an unforeseen reaction after implantation, such as allergy or discomfort, the implant is in such a place that its removal is quick and trouble-free – explains Dr Szymon Manasterski.

The expert in this press release is Szymon Manasterski, MD, specializing in musculoskeletal orthopedics and traumatology, a graduate of the Medical University of Wrocław and Kozminski University in Warsaw. He works in the Michalak Medical Center in Wrocław and the Manamedica Medical Center.