Silicone Implant Stories, Breast Implant Helpline

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K.MRuptured Implants Can Require Surgery

 K M has a story to share. She had silicone implants for breast augmentation in her late 20s.  But she noticed something years later.

"When I was crossing my left arm across my body — for instance, to put lotion on my right arm — I would make a little noise from my armpit, the way little boys do when they stick their hand in their armpit and pump their arm up and down," Marion says. "A little tooty noise."

An MRI showed both her implants had burst. Her doctor immediately recommended removing them, which she did. Marion hasn't suffered any apparent harm from her ruptured implants, and she even confesses to having an occasional twinge of regret that she didn't have them replaced when she had the old ones removed. But ultimately she decided she didn't want to go through more surgery.

"Well, how long would these next ones last? I would be in my 60s when I had to do this again, and who wants to have surgery unnecessarily when you are 60 something?" says Marion.

Although the long-term effects of silicone in the body are still uncertain, many plastic surgeons don't see the leaking of modern implants as a health concern.

"The actual silicone that's within the implants is inert. So if the silicone gel leaks, it doesn't travel through the body, it doesn't cause systemic problems. So the MRI is really detecting a cosmetic concern," says New York City plastic surgeon Matthew Schulman.

 

But there have been more serious outcomes. A K got silicone implants in 1991 following a double mastectomy. For years afterward she felt ill, suffered multiple bouts of pneumonia, had trouble breathing and pain in her chest. Doctors reassured her it wasn't her implants.

"We had a CT scan done, and it showed OK — everything looked fine, so we didn't worry about it," says Knecht.

But no one ever told her to get an MRI — something the FDA now recommends that women with silicone implants get every few years. As it turned out, Knecht's implants had leaked; a biopsy found silicone in her lymph nodes and in her lungs. She is currently disabled and awaiting a lung transplant — all, she says, for vanity.

"We're about four generations removed from those implants," says Schulman, the plastic surgeon. He explains that implants have undergone big changes since the early 1990s, when Knecht received hers. Back then they contained a runny liquid silicone.

"The silicone implants of today are what we call a cohesive gel — it's essentially like a jelly. So the jelly may ooze a little bit, but it will not run out like an oil," says Schulman.

 

Sid Wolf of the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen is among critics who point out that the data in the FDA report sample just a fraction of the nearly 400,000 women who receive breast implants each year. Moreover, that data are limited to just the last two or three years — not enough, Wolf says, to make any real claims about the long-term safety of the implants.

"There is a huge deficiency of long-term data at a time when we know that the longer these devices are in, the more problems … occur," says Wolf.

 

by Mary McDonough
Since I went public with my breast implant problems six years ago, hundreds of women have contacted me desperate for trustworthy information about breast implants. Like me, they underwent various operations they were told were perfectly safe then had terrible problems. To add insult to injury, they couldn't find out how to get better.

 

I founded In the Know as a support group for women in the entertainment industry who are struggling with these issues. It is essential that we all get "in the know."

S.H

My implants ruptured and have been removed. However, I still have platinum and silicone that has crystallized in my saliva, my mucous, urine, and blood. My eyes, ears and nose also ooze crystallized platinum and silicone. As a direct result from the chemicals and heavy metals used to manufacture silicone gel breast implants, I suffer daily with the symptoms of M.S, lupus, visual problems, fibromyalgia….

Sandhya Pruthi, M.D.

The major problem associated with ruptured silicone breast implants is the formation of scar tissue in the breast. If the rupture isn't addressed, the scar tissue can lead to pain and changes in the contour or shape of the breast. However, there's no scientific evidence that ruptured silicone breast implants cause serious, long-term health problems — such as breast cancer or connective tissue diseases

A Personal Story

Well, as I type this – 3 surgeries and months later, I am finally showing signs of improvement.  Many woman do get better, some take up to 2 years, and many women never fully recover. My medical file is about 5 inches thick, I am on a lot of medication and I have a team of about 6 doctors I see at USC now.  They are all fascinated and with this happening to so many women and it is so hard for me to believe how bad the medical community is kept in the dark.  They love learning new things and are excited to help and often get discouraged that they can't – but I don't like being a lab rat or a medical discovery center. This is not what I thought I was signing up for.

I still don't know if I will ever be 100% again. I have been diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease (MCTD), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Fibromyalgia (FM), Epstein-Barr Diease and like I said.. I have had many Lupus and MS symptoms, but I don't test positive for the diseases.  I have also had new thyroid and adrenal fatigue problems and I even have unexplainable blocked blood flow in my brain and lesions or marks on my brain that can't be pinpointed. With all of this, as you can imagine, it is very frustrating for my family and I and we have lost tens of thousands of dollars along with precious time that we'll never get back.

another source on Breast Implants

Self-reported conditions

Three hundred fifty-one (4.8 percent) of the implant patients and 62 (2.9 percent) of the comparison patients reported a diagnosis of one of four major CTDs (rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, systemic lupus erythematosus, or Sjögren’s syndrome), generating a relative risk of 2.0 (95 percent confidence interval (CI): 1.5, 2.8)  Significant risk elevations were noted for rheumatoid arthritis (relative risk (RR) = 1.9, 95 percent CI: 1.4, 2.7), systemic lupus erythematosus (RR = 2.1, 95 percent CI: 1.1, 4.2), and Sjögren’s syndrome (RR = 11.7, 95 percent CI: 2.5, 54.9). Scleroderma was associated with a threefold risk on the basis of 23 implant patients and three comparison subjects. Significant risks were also observed for Raynaud’s phenomenon (RR = 2.6, 95 percent CI: 1.3, 5.1) and chronic fatigue syndrome (RR = 2.4, 95 percent CI: 1.6, 3.6).

P & S a breast Implant Husbands Story

S and I have been together since 1999 and, until she became a participant in the silicone breast implant study, she was extremely healthy, physically active, very confident and a lot of fun to be around. In 2005, almost immediately after she had her existing saline breast implants replaced with silicone implants, her health, her life and my life began to change. Not only would S described to me the unusual things that she was feeling, but I could definitely notice some of the changes taking place in her. She started complaining of things like dizziness, various joint pains, physical and mental anxieties, blurred vision and a host of other symptoms that were all new and that we did not understand the origin of at the time…

and Last  A Snake dies of Silicone poisoning from Biting a Models Breast

Model Orit Fox has unwittingly killed a snake after it bit her surgically-enhanced breasts and died of silicone poisoning. Fox – Israel's answer to Katie Price – was handling the normally tame snake on Spanish TV when she attempted to lick its face. Evidently finding this rather provocative, the snake reacted badly, clamping down on Fox's ample chest. Fox was rushed to hospital where she received a tetanus jab, but she suffered no long-term damage. Unfortunately the snake did not survive.