Boobs and health?

Question

Some women like to have their boobs enlarged. This is done by injecting silicon into their boobs. However, is this good? Will this lead to serious health effects? Will it lead to cancer?

Answer 1

1) According to the National Institute of Medicine, 25 to 40 percent of people who get breast implants end up needing another operation to correct something wrong with the first one. (The rate varied in particular studies, depending on things like how long women were monitored, the typical time being five years.)

2) A study by a maker of saline breast implants, Mentor, found that 27 percent of implants put into breast cancer patients had to be taken back out again within three years, due to side effects. Another 13 percent had to have lesser corrective surgeries. The competing manufacturer McGhan has similar numbers. Even for healthy patients, both were forced to admit that "most women experienced at least one complication over the three year period".

3) In general, breast cancer patients have complications with implants far more often than healthy people do. Many of the complications are about three times as likely for mastectomy reconstruction patients as for cosmetic augmentation patients. We regard this as socially the most acceptable and necessary time for implants to be used, but medically it is the most risky and unjustifiable time to use them.

4) Up to 9 percent of saline implants end up deflating within just three years, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA also found that complications become more and more common for each year implants spend in the body.

5) Another FDA study found that even among women who had not complained of any perceived trouble with their implants, MRI scans showed two thirds of them have ruptured implants on at least one side. The rate was actually higher in 10 to 15 year old implants than with 20 year old ones, because the older ones were made with thicker containers. In 21 percent of women in the study, significant volumes of silicone were found to have migrated elsewhere in the body. Doctors removing implants often claim that they ruptured at the time of removal. This study makes me suspect, as some patients long have, that many doctors are lying about this for some reason, perhaps to avoid liability.

6) Though rare, it is not unknown for complications to be so severe that the breast ends up getting amputated. The chest wall can be injured. Your lungs and heart can be affected. You can end up dead.

7) They sometimes find cultures of microorganisms growing inside saline implants when they're removed. This is worrisome given that the newest implants contain vegetable oil... it could spoil. Saline, at least, is not a nutritious meal for bacteria. Even the silicone gel ones sometimes get some kind of mildewy looking stuff growing inside them... and each new fluid they've tried has been friendlier to microorganisms than the last one was.

8) If you're a European patient who has the option of oil-filled implants (these implants have not been approved in the US), British doctor Rahim Karjoo warns that oils leaking into the body will absorb calcium, and the resulting soaplike material, if it enters the bloodstream, can create fat emboli which can kill you without warning. The British government recently withdrew its approval for oil-filled implants and they will no longer be sold there.

9) Surgery in fatty tissues runs a much higher risk of difficult and dangerous infections taking root than surgery in lean tissue does. Infections with implants present are harder to treat than otherwise. In some cases the implant has to be taken out before the infection can be controlled. This problem affects about one breast augmentation patient out of 80.

10) So they replaced silicone implants with saline ones, avoiding the possible immunological problems associated with silicone gel leakage... and then the National Institute of Medicine decided that silicone has been "exonerated" and doesn't cause many of the problems it was accused of causing... So what -- somehow just about as many people have problems with saline implants as had trouble with silicone ones. The container is still silicone rubber, after all, which differs from silicone gel mostly just in the length of its molecules' polymer chains. Eventually, small flakes of silicone rubber come loose, and sometimes the chains break down chemically, yielding fluid silicone compounds, elemental silicon, and silica dust. (The operation often leaves stray talcum powder in the body, too.) The implant container can also release traces of heavy metals like lead and platinum (used as a catalyst in creating the silicone polymers), and carcinogenic solvents like xylene and toluene. A German study (J. Friemann, M. Bauer, et al) of the scar tissue surrounding removed implants found the tissue was commonly impregnated with chemicals from the implant, and also showed evidence of chronic inflammation occurring there.

11) And if the official line is that silicone is now exonerated, then why isn't it okay to inject silicone directly into the body without a container around it, like they used to back in 1960? No doctor would try that now... they could land in jail. Some doctors are of the opinion that no facility that accepts blood or organ donations should take any from women who have silicone in their bodies, whether it's in a container or not.

12) The "exoneration" of silicone and implants is based on a failure to link it to certain autoimmune diseases that some implant patients were diagnosed with: arthritis, lupus, sclerodoma, etc. Interestingly, the same symptoms (sore joints, weak muscles, fatigue, cognitive difficulties) keep leading to different diagnoses, none of which was provable in itself. The obvious conclusion is that the condition is a separate disease that somewhat resembles these others. One theory is that many of these symptoms might be caused by ethylene oxide, which was used to sterilize many implants after they were manufactured, possibly contaminating the material. They also found no link with breast cancer... but overall cancers were another matter. Two recent NIH studies of overall mortality of women with implants, one from the National Cancer Institute (Dr. Louise Brinton) and one from the FDA, found plenty of extra mortality relative to patients of other plastic surgeries. Causes included lung cancer, brain cancer, a few other cancers, other lung diseases, and an increased rate of suicide.

13) One of the fastest growing areas of medical practice is surgeons who specialize in repairing the errors and complications of boob jobs done by other doctors. "If a doctor tells you they don't have complications, they're either not operating or they're lying to you," says Dr. Jack A. Friedland of Scottsdale.

14) A lot of doctors doing boob jobs and other vanity surgery are half-assed quacks without proper qualifications. Most states allow anyone with a medical degree -- even dentists -- to take a weekend course and sell plastic surgery. They do it because it's easy money. Dr. Ervin Moss of New Jersey says, "You can't imagine how many specialist groups are lobbying against [laws requiring proper accreditation] as a threat to the bottom line."

15) Can you imagine your doctor brushing off life-threatening complications and telling you "You look great!" when you ought to be heading for the emergency room? It's been known to happen in the cosmetic surgery biz...

16) You want health insurance coverage for other breast-related illnesses? Goooooooood luck.

17) The first time I had a chance to feel a pair of **** with implants in them, they felt like two blocks of cement covered with a quarter inch of skin. I was told it was an unusually high quality job, too.

18) They claim that the cement tit problem has been solved, and modern operations don't produce that kind of extreme hardening any more. Well, they still end up hardening sometimes. One doctor who trumpets the improvements over past techniques and calls saline implants "absolutely safe" (George Beraka of New York -- he gives plastic surgery advice on women.com and elsewhere) still admits that 5 to 8 percent can end up "as firm as your thigh" due to scar tissue... and that he sees "a lot of bad results" from other doctors. I think he's understating the problem rate... Mentor found that 9 percent of augmentations had serious "capsular contracture" (which causes hardening, and sometimes pain), sometimes bad enough to require reoperation.

Answer 2

DONT KNOW,BUT I DO KNOW THAT IT CAN BE DANGEROUS. A GIRL I WENT TO SCHOOL WITH IS A COMA CUZ OF IT.

Answer 3

I don't no but i would imagine it probably will, thank god mine are real. lol