The above seems to show the use of forceps with teeth to handle the flex implant. This is a problem since the teeth will cut into the biopolymer and potentially compromise the integrity of the material.
Another question - did the artist autoclave the implant before installation, or did they drop it straight out of the gas plasma sterilization pouch provided on to the sterile field?
This is likely. The bottom line is, you can’t tell when there is no longer any swelling… also read Swelling vs Inflammation … with the amount of trauma associated with the installation method, you may have to wait 6-8 weeks, or possibly longer, for all swelling to dissapate. My Apex Mega took 4 months for absolutely all swelling to go away. This is due to trapped coagulated blood surrounding the implant, which takes a very long time for the body to finally break up and remove… and the consistency of the dead blood itself does affect performance as well as push the surface of implant further away from the reader’s inductor coils… and sometimes getting a read vs not getting one is just a small matter of 0.25mm.
Bottom line, I don’t think your implant was damaged to the point where it was compromised… but if so, generally speaking performance will slowly decline over weeks or months until it is unreadable. This is typically due to the slow infiltration of fluids into the polyamide flex PCB itself, de-laminating it and acting as an electrolyte which detunes it… and finally it will result in basically a short circuit.