Mortician reveals what happens to breast implants and hip replacements when you die – and you won’t believe it

A MORTICIAN has revealed what happens to breast implants and hip replacements when you die – and you won’t believe it.

Caitlin Doughty, also known as Ask A Mortician on YouTube, has been giving views answers to bizarre questions for years now but this is definitely one of the most morbid.

Breast implants are usually cremated with the body, but do have the potential to melt and leave a ‘gelatinous goo’ stuck to the bottom of the machine.

Pacemakers, it would seem, never actually make it into the cremation machines as the batteries and intense heat would cause a ‘boom.’

Ask A Mortician said: “When I was a crematory operator I would never trust the authorisation form to tell us whether the deceased had a pacemaker, I would usually just feel on their chest as it would be sticking out and use a scalpel to remove it.”

But it’s slightly better news for those with hip replacements, as the titanium actually survives the cremation and remains all in one good piece, Ask A Mortician revealed.

It’s common knowledge that after a cremation all that’s really left is a pile of bones turned to ashes, and everything else like your hair, clothes and organs burn away, apart from metal.

In the video, she says said: “The metal has to be removed by hand or by a large magnet, and it’s not handled as biological waste because it was never really part of the body to begin with.

She continued: “The family is totally welcome to ask for the pieces back, but I’ve gotten that request exactly zero times.”

For years, hip and knee replacements were usually thrown away by the crematory, but now there are companies in the US and Europe that recycle them to make things like road signs, plane parts and car parts.

With that being said, the crematories can’t exactly make money from the items, as that’s ‘hella ghoulish’ in the words of Caitlin, so charitable projects are the only real option in this case.