How Much Do You Really Know About Breast Implants?

      The safety of breast implants has been a controversial issue since 1990, when a Congressional hearing revealed that no studies of human beings had ever been done before the implants were sold to more than one million women.

Although breast implants have been available (without safety testing) since 1962, they became a very popular and very public trend in the early 90's. Millions of women in the USA already have them and hundreds of thousands more, many of them in their teens and early 20s, get them every year. After years of controversy cooled enthusiasm for implants, a new generation of women are buying into the increasingly popular 'look' that this procedure provides--and the speed at which they are doing so has been increasing at a startling rate.

As a woman who has studied women's body image, I have tried to understand this resurgence. Women are bombarded with images of thin Barbie-like models with large implanted breasts every time we visit a news stand or see an ad for lingerie. Even clothing ads are increasingly showing less and less clothing and looking more and more like the artificial, airbrushed Maxim magazine editorials. Very thin bodies with large chests very rarely happen in real life. Despite this, magazines, billboards, models like Gisele Bundchen, and catalogs like Victoria's Secret have made this body type the expected ideal.

In the late 1980s, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (ASPRS) provided information to the FDA in support of breast implants, and claimed that there was "a substantial and enlarging body of medical opinion that these deformities [small breasts] are really a disease." With no objective studies, plastic surgeons instead quoted their own marketing survey, which reported that ninety percent of implant patients were "very satisfied."

In 1991-92 it became apparent that the estimate of two million implant patients had been based on the implants sold, not the number of women who had undergone surgery. Since most women had at least two implants and many had replacements, there were probably fewer than one million women with implants. This smaller denominator meant that the proportion of patients who were ill was twice as high.

Since then, researchers have published several epidemiological studies on the safety of silicone implants. Most have not evaluated many of the illnesses and symptoms mentioned by implant patients. Most studies have focused on cancer, scleroderma, and a few other classic autoimmune diseases, and found no statistically significant increase. However, the studies have major shortcomings; for example, most include a few hundred or at most a few thousand women with implants, which is not large enough to study rare diseases like scleroderma, which afflict less than one in 5,000 women. Moreover, most of the studies include many women who have had implants for a few months or years, even though these diseases take many years to develop.

Even today, most of the information put out about breast implants are created by the surgeons themselves to ease potential customers minds. For example, there are current studies that use psychological tests to measure self-esteem changes after getting breast implants. Some found an improvement after three years while other tests found no change at all. The tests that found an improvement did not compare the sample group with a control group of people who didn't get surgery, to find out how much people tend to gain in self-esteem just by living. (Usually it's young people who have the most trouble with self-esteem.) So before you buy into a study, check where the information is coming from.

FDA studies indicate that "most women with silicone gel-filled breast implants will have at least one broken implant within 10 years."

When I first spoke to women with implant problems, their stories seemed difficult to believe. They told me about silicone dripping from nipples, breasts so hard that they were embarrassed to be hugged, and breasts deformed by ruptured implants or by the surgery that attempted to remove the defective product. Many young women described feeling like their grandmothers, exhausted by simple daily tasks, unable to recover from flu-like illnesses, or disabled by joint or muscle pain that left them unable to work or care for their families. Virtually all claimed that their doctors did not take their complaints seriously.

So be realistic about what can happen to you after surgery. Any surgery on breasts can, and often does, damage nerves and reduce skin sensation. The extent of the loss in sensation is unpredictable but we know that, however severe, the damage can't be completely reversed. Attempts to reduce this effect have a tradeoff: they increase the visibility of the surgical scar. Complete numbness of the nipple is not unknown. In a smaller number of cases, the side effect is the opposite: painful hypersensitivity to touch.

If you want to know the nitty-gritty of what it's really like to have implants, take it from writer Paul Kienitz when he says that "...breast implants are like stage makeup: they look good at a distance. They look better on you from 50 feet than from 10 feet, better from 10 feet than from one foot, better in a photograph or video than in real life, and better with more clothing than they do with less. They're at their worst when the distance is most intimate."

Think long and hard about what you hope your implants will accomplish for you. Truth is, implants are probably not going to bring you much closer to what you really want. What are you really after? You'd better take a hard look at that question before you act on the assumption that implants will get it for you.

If you want more male attention, implants may increase the quantity but only with a corresponding decrease in quality. You'll get your biggest gains in approval among guys who are most prone to objectifying you, and least prone to treating you as an equal.

If you want to fell more feminine or sexy, the way to do it is to start appreciating the body you've got. If your mindset toward your body is negative, no change of appearance will ever eliminate that! If you think it will, you end up chasing an illusion. When you are in the habit of always finding fault with your body, you will never run out of faults to find... indeed, you'll only find more and more as you get older. It's a trap, and changing your body won't get you out of it -- the one thing that will is to change the fault-finding way of treating yourself. If I treated you that way, I'd be intolerable... so why treat yourself that way?

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"I'd be dissapointed if my girlfriend's breasts were implants." false: 55%, true: 45%
- Marie Claire magazine poll, Dec 2001

The Men Comment

"From the impression women receive from movies and men's magazines, I certainly understand if they feel that all men find it necessary that their girlfriend has DD breasts with a 21-inch waist.

This is where we men are just not being given any credit for having intelligence. Besides, the bottom line about these artificial mammaries is that they generally look pretty bad. I am sure that there are some fine cosmetic surgeons available, but some of these jobs look like two rocks shoved under the skin with all the care of a 16-year old-kid packing a bag of groceries at the local supermarket.

Look at what is considered one of the highest compliments of post-operation breasts -- "They look so real!" I don't think that it is too absurd to say that the best way for a woman's breasts to look real is to simply keep them the way they are."

-- Brendan C. Quinn (advertising major)

"Some readers are going to think I'm being all PC and others will think I'm simply lying, but the truth is, bigger is not always better.

Sure, I admit it: We men often like a generously sized bosom to grope, fondle or lay our beer-addled heads on from time to time. But that doesn't mean we want big boobs at all costs.

In my (meager) experience, the silicone-enhanced breast is an unconvincing facsimile. First of all, it doesn't look like the real deal. Rather, the "Silicone Sally" seems to jut forth incongruously from the chest like the Kilimanjaro massif above the Serengeti. Or fake boobs just seem to rise like a mini-mall over a vacant lot, rather than emerging naturally from the rest of a woman's body. This is one strike against 'em.

Another thing with fakies is this: What's the deal with the nipple? Nipples on fake breasts seem to point in all manner of directions, ever facing up like a coked-up party hostess. Natural nipples may sag a bit, but this is what makes them beautiful -- the fact that they look like they belong to a live woman rather than to a mannequin.

Finally, there is the question of feel. While I have never actually felt a silicone job, there's no way those things could rival the soft, supple, fleshy beauty of the lipid-only mammary. Groping a fake breast seems to me like reaching into the cupboard for a piece of Tupperware.

In sum, the silicone-ized breast is to the natural boob what AstroTurf is to fine, soft, sweet Kentucky bluegrass. Most prefer the real thing, and even a novice can tell the difference. Besides, small breasts are beautiful in their own way and many a man has shown a marked preference for the modestly sized mammary. So I say keep your boobs the way they are and save money on the surgery, not to mention all those new bras."

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Implants- Technically Speaking

By Stacy Dockrell

According to statistics, the top reasons why women get implants are: restoration of normal breast appearance after a mastectomy, correction of asymmetry of breast, and (the most popular reason) enlargement of breasts in patients who have less breast tissue than desired. The technical definition of implants is the implantation of artificial material inside the female breast to enlarge them or give them a different shape.

As with every medical procedure there are risks, especially when you are putting a foreign object or material into your body. This can be dangerous and harmful for many reasons. First of all, you may have heard that some women have had complications with their implants. It is rare but can be expected. Never think it can't or won't happen to you. It very well might.

Some of the most common complications with breast implants are bleeding, infection, formation of thickened band of tissue from bleeding around the breast (capsular contracture), and the most rare complication is the implant may become dislodged or rupture. Studies show that 1 in 4 women require surgery within 5 years due to complications. This can involve removing the implant and the tissue surrounding it and replacing it with a new implant. Also, studies show that within 10-20 years silicone implants have been shown to fall apart.

Today the alternative to silicone is saline. Saline is simply salt water in a silicone casing that is placed in the body. It is found to be much safer and since it is material that is found in the body it is considered to be the best way to go. There are some risk factors that can make your surgery somewhat complicated and difficult. The risk factors include: smoking, obesity, excess alcohol consumption, use of muscle relaxants, sleep inducers, insulin, sedatives, cortisone, narcotics, psychedelics, hallucinogens, marijuana, hypnotics, and cocaine.

FDA studies show that 49% of women require surgery within 10 years due to complications.

If you decide to get breast implants know that there are risks to every medical procedure, know the health hazards, and know the performance (lifetime expectancy). Get in touch with a trustworthy plastic surgeon. Ask around and do a background check, find out their experience and liability. A surgery will usually take place in a hospital or outpatient facility. They usually take a blood test and a mammogram before the surgery and another blood test after the surgery. The procedure involves anaesthesia by injection or inhalation. Implants are then put in and the sutures or clips can be removed 1 week after surgery. Your doctor may require you wear a special bra or elastic bandages to give you support throughout recovery. More than likely most breast implantations go along fine and recovery is about 1-2 weeks.

Be aware of what can happen, realize there is a risk and that it can happen to you.

Read More: Breast Implants as a Grad Gift
Surgery as a Sweet 16 or High School Graduation Gift
for Teens is More Common Than You Think!

For more information:

Implant Information Project: www.breastimplantinfo.org

Humantics Foundation--Recovery and Discovery:
www.humanticsfoundation.com