Implant rupture is uncommon among my patients, but it’s still an issue that most of the women who meet with me want to address before they figure out the details of their Beverly Hills breast implant surgery. Unfortunately, implant rupture isn’t a risk you can eliminate entirely – but as a surgeon who has experience revising the results of other surgeons’ work, I do have a few facts to share that can help you plan well to avoid this type of problem.
Your risk of rupture may be lower than it looks – Sometimes, an implant will rupture because of trauma (in a car accident, for example) or because the implant surface was damaged during the course of surgery. More often, though, rupture-revision patients are getting rid of older-style implants. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, we just didn’t have the technology or the understanding to do everything we can today to prevent rupturing, but there’s a world of difference between those older implants and today’s advanced semisolid-gel designs for silicone breast implants near Beverly Hills.
The effects of a ruptured implant on the body are also very different today. The biggest advantage of saline over silicone implants used to be that saline would reabsorb into the body naturally in the event of a rupture, while silicone could “ooze” if an implant was ruptured. This isn’t a problem with semisolid silicone, though, because even if the implant ruptures, the soft gel is cohesive enough to “stay put” inside it.
When it comes to rupture risk, not all implants are created equal – In most cases “wear and tear” implant ruptures happen because either the patient developed tightened scar tissue around the implant that squeezed it until it developed a hole, or because of implant “rippling.” When this happens, the breast implant shell folds a bit, rubbing against itself and wearing down the material until it punctures.
Key fact: implant rippling is a much, much lower risk with today’s silicone-gel implants. Saline implants may ripple, and older-style silicone implants that were filled with liquid silicone theoretically could ripple, but this just isn’t an issue with the semi-solid “gummy bear” breast implants that many Beverly Hills surgeons use today.
Leave a Reply