Silicone implants were removed from the market in the 90s. The thought was silicone implants caused a host of issues, from cancer to connective tissue disorders (like Lupus and chronic fatigue), to neurologic diseases and suicides. I am not going to go into a big discussion of this in this blog. I do think there are people who feel better when their implants are removed. My personal opinion is biofilm and the chronic inflammation from it is the likely culprit. See my biofilm blogs HERE. It is why I am so crazy about sterility and technique when placing implants.
For silicone implants to come back on the market, they made a huge study. This journal article in October 2017 Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Journal is the “Five Year Safety Data for More than 55,000 Subjects following Breast Implantation: Comparison of Rare Adverse Event Rates with Silicone Implants versus National Norms and Saline Implants.”
Study:
- 55,279 women (42,973 primary augmentation, 6,837 revisions augmentation)
- Part of the large 10 year study of over 1000 sites around the country
- Subjects followed 5-8 years looking for
- connective tissue disease
- lupus, polyareteritis nodosa, scleroderma, Sjogren syndrome, Wegner granulomatosis, relapsing polychondritis, chronic fatigue, CREST, fibromyalgia
- neurologic disease
- MS
- cancer
- Brain, cervical, breast, lung
- suicide.
- connective tissue disease
Findings:
- Over 5 years the Natrelle round silicone implants did not significantly increase the risk of any systemic disease
- This study was consistent with previous long term safety studies