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/Inamed/Allergan 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. If you don't have a healthy body at the start when you're getting the implants, the odds of keeping healthy with them in place plummet.
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. Read More
Even More Reasons Not To Get A Boob Job
In the time since I put up my "48 Reasons Not To Get A Boob Job" page, even in the early days when there were only about 27 reasons, quite a number of people have written to me in response to it, and many of these correspondents had gotten breast implants themselves. Though some wrote just to say that they were happy with their implants and had not experienced any problems with them (and, in some cases, suggested that I should therefore shut the hell up), many others had unfortunate experiences with them. Others have written to me who have not gotten implants, but have strongly considered buying them, offering a different perspective. I have also sometimes heard from friends and partners of those with implants.
Among these different points of view are many more reasons not to get a boob job that I could never have expressed myself. So here they are, in the correspondents' own words with minimal editing. Of course, I have kept all quotes as anonymous as possible. (Emphasis in boldface or italics is my own, not the original writer's.) Read More
