Tag Archives: breast implant

Danica Patrick reveals she had breast implants removed after suffering complications

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Katie Kindelan, Good Morning America, May 2, 2022

Former NASCAR driver Danica Patrick revealed she had her breast implants removed after suffering medical complications she believes were caused by the implants.

Patrick, who turned 40 in March, shared in an Instagram post that she had her implants removed this month, nearly eight years after undergoing breast augmentation surgery.

“I wasn’t sure I was ready to share this…. but then I remembered that true vulnerability is sharing something you’re not really ready to. So here it is,” Patrick wrote on Instagram, before going on to describe the complications she said she faced.

Patrick said she first noticed complications about three years after getting breast implants, including weight gain and hair breakage.

Nearly two years ago, at the end of 2020, Patrick said the “wheels came off” with her health.

“I had cycle irregularity, gained more weight, my hair wasn’t looking healthy at all and my face was a different shape (weird I know),” she wrote, adding that she also faced dizziness, adrenal fatigue, hypoglycemia, leaky gut and more. “So I went down the rabbit hole to figure it out. I did every test that could be done.”

Patrick wrote that she went to multiple doctors, took thyroid medications, tried a 90-day protocol to heal her gut and at one point was taking “up to 30 pills a day” to improve her health, all to no avail.

Ultimately, Patrick said she came to the conclusion that she had breast implant illness, a term coined by clinicians and patients to describe symptoms reported by women after breast reconstruction or augmentation using implants, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
After undergoing surgery to remove the implants, Patrick said she quickly noticed improvements to her health.

“Within hours after surgery this is what I noticed – my face had more color and less dark circles … my face started producing oil again,” she wrote. “I could take a 30% deeper breath into my chest already, and I had so much energy when I woke up.”

[….]

What to know about breast implant illness

Breast implant illness is not yet a recognized medical term but is described by experts as a “diagnosis by exclusion,” according to Diana Zuckerman, Ph.D., president of the National Center for Health Research, who has studied the health impact of breast implants for over 30 years.
“Diagnosis by exclusion means that there is no test for it, but there are tests for other things that have the same symptoms or similar symptoms,” Zuckerman said. “And if there is no other reason for this array of symptoms, then there are doctors who will call it breast implant illness.”

There are as many as 40 symptoms of breast implant illness, but the most common symptoms include joint and muscle pain, fatigue, memory problems or brain fog, hair loss and difficulty breathing, according to Zuckerman.

She said Patrick’s story of taking years to get to a diagnosis is not uncommon for women who suffer health complications due to breast implants.

It can take years for breast implants to start causing complications, which makes it more difficult to link complications back to breast implants, according to Zuckerman, who was not involved in Patrick’s care. She also noted that many of the symptoms of breast implant illness can, and are, attributed to other things.

“When [women] go to the doctor and say, ‘I have joint pain. I’m really tired,’ the doctor will say things like, ‘No wonder you’re tired, you have a young child,’ or, ‘No wonder you’re tired, you’re 45 years old. You’re not 25 years old anymore,” said Zuckerman.

“So there’s been this, some might call it gaslighting, but this sense that these are common symptoms and they could be anything,” she said. “But, what is distinct about them is there are so many women who are experiencing them, and there are very good studies showing when women have these symptoms and they have their breast implants taken out, almost all of them get better.”

Breast implant surgery is considered an elective procedure that is done not only for cosmetic reasons but also for women undergoing breast reconstruction after a medical procedure such as a mastectomy.

Saline-filled and silicone gel-filled are the two types of breast implants approved for use in the United States, according to the FDA.

Breast implants may cause damage if they leak in the body, or because they can cause scar tissue to build in the body, according to Zuckerman.

“When women have a breast implant, their body almost always forms a scar tissue capsule around the implant,” she said. “The body is basically protecting itself by surrounding this foreign body, this breast implant, with scar tissue, and that scar tissue can get very thick and can get very hard and be a bad symptom in that it can be painful.”

Zuckerman said that the popularization of social media has helped women with similar symptoms connect and share their experiences, leading to greater awareness and more diagnoses of breast implant illness.

Patrick wrote on Instagram that she watched “over 100 stories on YouTube” of women with breast implant complications.

“Social media has really made the big difference here,” Zuckerman said. “It wasn’t until Facebook and other social media options became available that women could really share their stories.”

“We’ve certainly known women who’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on tests and specialists, and nothing helped and then they went online and found a Facebook page or some other social media, and they started reading these stories of other women that sounded just like them,” she said.

[….]

Zuckerman, a member of the working group that advised the FDA on implant safety, said she advises women who are thinking of getting implants to make sure they also have the resources to get them removed later on if needed.

“Don’t get them unless you can afford to have them taken out,” she said. “A lot of women spend all this money getting them put in, and then when they get sick, they don’t have the money to get them taken out. It costs just as much, sometimes more, to have them taken out.”

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Breast Implants will now come with Black Box Warnings, List Risks

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Sara E. Teller, Legal Reader: November 9, 2021

In 2019, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel heard from dozens of women asking the government agency to inform the public in a direct way about the debilitating and potentially life-threatening symptoms commonly referred to as “breast implant illness.”  Now, ten years after discovering a link between some implants and cancer, the FDA has ordered “black box” warnings be put on all boxes and a new checklist of risks to be provided to patients.

The warnings and checklist advise patients of the serious side effects, including the link to cancer of the immune system (anaplastic large cell lymphoma), as well as chronic medical conditions, including autoimmune diseases, joint pain, mental confusion, muscle aches and chronic fatigue.  The checklist even identifies which types of patients could be at higher risk for illness after breast implant surgery.  And this includes breast cancer patients who have had, or plan to have, chemotherapy or radiation treatments – the very same population of women who are commonly encouraged to seek implants for breast reconstruction.

The FDA is also requiring manufacturers to disclose the ingredients used to make implants, and these must be made public within thirty days.  However, one complication is that patients are unlikely to see a warning label on sterile medical device only a surgeon would have access to.  It’s also not clear how the new mechanisms will be reinforced, even though the FDA said all patients “must be given the opportunity to sign the checklist.”

Critics of the checklist have said that the language used is hard to understand and that patients may sign off without fully understanding what they’re signing. “It’s better than nothing, but it’s not as good as it could be,” said Diana Zuckerman, a scientist at the National Center for Health Research and member of the working group that advised the FDA on implant safety. “They say things like, ‘Breast implants are associated with lymphoma,’ but lymphoma is actually caused by the implants.  People understand it if you say, ‘Breast implants can cause lymphoma.’”

She also believes not every surgeon will take the time necessary to allow patients to digest the black box warning information and ask any questions. “What if a surgeon says, ‘Here’s a checklist.  I know it’s long, so it’s up to you if you want to read it or not’?” Dr. Zuckerman said. “Patient groups are very concerned that will happen.”

Dr. Mark Clemens, a professor at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and a liaison to the FDA for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons Society, argued, “The black box warning and checklist represent a huge step forward for patient safety and implants.  But more high-quality data about long-term outcomes for women with implants is needed.”

[….]

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Patients Must Be Warned of Breast Implant Risks, F.D.A. Says

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Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times: October 27, 2021

Federal regulators on Wednesday placed so-called black box warnings on breast implant packaging and told manufacturers to sell the devices only to health providers who review the potential risks with patients before surgery.

Both the warnings and a new checklist that advises patients of the risks and side effects state that breast implants have been linked to a cancer of the immune system and to a host of other chronic medical conditions, including autoimmune diseases, joint pain, mental confusion, muscle aches and chronic fatigue.

Startlingly, the checklist identifies particular types of patients who are at higher risk for illness after breast implant surgery. The group includes breast cancer patients who have had, or plan to have, chemotherapy or radiation treatments.

That represents a large percentage of women who until now were encouraged to have breast reconstruction with implants following their treatment.

The Food and Drug Administration is also requiring manufacturers for the first time to disclose the ingredients used to make breast implants, information that patient advocates have long sought. The information must be made public in 30 days.

It is not clear how the new requirements will be enforced, and patients are highly unlikely to ever see a warning label on a packaged sterile medical device that is usually handled only by a surgeon. F.D.A. officials said in a statement that the patients “must be given the opportunity” to sign the checklist.

[….]

Reactions to the new requirements were mixed. While some doctors welcomed the new warning system, others worried that the potential risks and side effects would not be conveyed adequately by plastic surgeons who were eager to reassure patients the procedure is safe and that the new checklist would be handled in a dismissive manner.

Critics also said the checklist was overly long and written in obtuse language. “It’s better than nothing, but it’s not as good as it could be,” said Diana Zuckerman, a scientist who heads the National Center for Health Research and was a member of the working group that advised the F.D.A. on implant safety.

“They say things like, ‘Breast implants are associated with lymphoma,’ but lymphoma is actually caused by the implants,” Dr. Zuckerman said. “People understand it if you say, ‘Breast implants can cause lymphoma.’”

She worried that surgeons would not take the time to adequately review the information with patients.

“What if a surgeon says, ‘Here’s a checklist — I know it’s long, so it’s up to you if you want to read it or not’?” Dr. Zuckerman said. “Patient groups are very concerned that will happen.”

[….]

To read the entire article, click here.

Patients Continue to Be Inadequately Informed of Risk for Breast Implant-Associated ALCL

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Christina Bennet, MS, Cancer Therapy Advisor: February 8, 2021

Although the risk for breast implant-associated anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) has been well-documented, patients considering breast implants continue to be inadequately informed of the propensity for disease development. Awareness of BIA-ALCL has risen since 2020, but adequate safeguards have not yet been put in place, according to experts in the field.

“There have been efforts made [to ensure patients are informed], but they have not been successful,” Diana Zuckerman, PhD, president of the National Center for Health Research (NCHR), said in an interview with Cancer Therapy Advisor.

The most recent effort to more frontally disclose the risk for BIA-ALCL is a final guidance document released by the FDA on September 28, 2020.1 The guidance, which applies to all breast implants, advised breast implant manufacturers to add a black box warning that mentions the risks associated with breast implants such as BIA-ALCL. In the guidance, the FDA also encouraged manufacturers to incorporate a patient decision checklist in the labeling to “better ensure certain information is received and understood by patients.”1,2 Manufacturers, however, are not required to follow these recommendations.

Zuckerman, who is a member of the Breast Implant Working Group, said she was surprised by the FDA’s decision to recommend rather than require these facets of the guidance. “We don’t have the answer to that question other than we have talked to FDA officials who said that at least some of this will at some point be a requirement, but we don’t know when that is,” she said.

With no mandates in place to ensure that patients receive information about the risks for BIA-ALCL—among other breast implant-associated complications—upfront, the industry is left to educate—and this does not seem to be working.

Patient advocates Terri McGregor and Jennifer Cook, both of whom have received a BIA-ALCL diagnosis, discussed a misleading patient brochure that has further contributed to the misinformation about breast implant-associated cancer risk. Sold online by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), the brochure featured the symbol for breast reconstruction awareness—a modified pink ribbon—and the slogan “Closing the loop on breast cancer.”3

The brochure was sponsored by several companies, including 2 prominent breast implant manufacturers, Allergan and Mentor. Though the document was promoted on Twitter by the ASPS and users were encouraged users to “stock up now” ahead of Breast Reconstruction Day,3,4  it notably made no mention of BIA-ALCL—not even on the page that describes the risks and safety issues associated with breast implants.

Conflicts of Interest Cloud Risk Disclosure

[…]

Eric Swanson, MD, a plastic surgeon at the Swanson Center for Cosmetic Surgery in Leawood, Kansas, told Cancer Therapy Advisor that plastic surgeons’ financial ties to breast implant manufacturers are part of the reason why they have been slow to respond to the issue of BIA-ALCL. “There’s a big problem with conflict of interest in plastic surgery. Once [a person has] taken funds from a company, it is very rare for the taker to be critical of that company,” Swanson said.

[….]

Zuckerman described the ASPS brochure as “terribly” out of date. “The Institute of Medicine report is more than 20 years old, and there has been a great deal of research since then,” she said.

[….]

The ASPS Brochure: Current Status

When Cancer Therapy Advisor inquired about the content of the brochure, an ASPS representative agreed that the information was “outdated” and removed the brochure from sale on its website.

Enclosed in the ASPS brochure was a list of websites that included breastimplantsafety.org, which—despites its domain name—did not include any safety information about breast implants. Instead, the domain redirected users to a different domain, smartbeautyguide.com, the patient site for The Aesthetic Society, a professional organization for plastic surgeons. A representative for The Aesthetic Society told Cancer Therapy Advisor that breastimplantsafety.org was active until 2015, when it migrated to their patient site, Smart Beauty Guide.

“We have been developing and will launch our new Aesthetic Society website that will include a dedicated section for patient education,” the representative wrote in an email. Within days of being contacted by Cancer Therapy Advisor, The Aesthetic Society updated the breastimplantsafety.org domain name to direct users to an existing page that provides resources about breast implants, including information about BIA-ALCL and breast implant illness, a systemic condition characterized by a wide range of symptoms that is currently under FDA investigation.18

Read the full article here

Allergan is trying to track down women with breast implants it recalled nearly a year ago

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Maria Aspan, Fortune: June 03, 2020

More than 10 months after recalling some of its breast implants, Allergan is making a new effort to find tens of thousands of women who still have the dangerous devices.

The pharmaceutical company, now owned by AbbVie, said this week that it will launch a digital and social media ad campaign to alert patients about the July 2019 recall of its textured Biocell implants. Those implants have been linked in academic studies to a sometimes-fatal cancer known as BIA-ALCL, for “breast implant–associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma.” More than 33 women have now died from BIA-ALCL.

Allergan’s announcement comes two weeks after Fortune published an investigation into the persistent problems with breast implants and the health risks, including BIA-ALCL, they have created for millions of women worldwide. These risks have been amplified by decades of inadequate study and problems that were hidden by breast implant manufacturers, as well as the generally poor tracking of medical devices, our investigation found.

Many women affected by Allergan’s Biocell recall told Fortune that they found out about it through social media or news reports, rather than directly from the company or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which requested the recall.

On Monday, Allergan acknowledged that it does not have device-tracking information for some 52,000 Biocell breast implants. Despite “robust efforts” to reach patients since last July, “the company is still seeking to directly contact all U.S. Biocell patients that have not yet been notified,” Allergan said in a press release.

“We are continuing to make every effort to make sure that each and every patient is made aware of the Biocell recall, and knows their implant type and implant history,” John Maltman, Allergan’s vice president of medical affairs, said in the release.

A company spokesperson did not respond to a request for more specifics about when the ad campaign would launch, or what exactly it would entail. And longtime critics of breast implant safety greeted Allergan’s announced plans with skepticism.

“I don’t know how visible it’s going to be,” says Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research. “Will the kind of money and effort be put into this in a way that’s comparable to ad campaigns when they’re selling something?

The new ad campaign appears to be at the behest of the FDA, which “asked Allergan to develop a strategy to contact patients who may not have heard about the recall,” an agency spokesperson told Fortune by email on Tuesday, adding that the FDA “is working with Allergan to amplify the message and outreach related to its July 2019 voluntary recall of certain breast implants.”

This is the latest of several actions the FDA has taken on breast implant safety in the wake of Fortune’s investigation. Last month, after speaking with Fortune, the FDA sent a warning letter to Allergan over its longtime failure to comply with regulatory requirements for selling its implants. At the same time, the agency also sent a letter to a smaller manufacturer warning about manufacturing and quality-control issues.

[…]

Read the full article here.

Women Should Be Warned of Breast Implant Hazards, F.D.A. Says

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Roni Caryn Rabin, NY Times: October 23, 2019

Women considering surgery to receive breast implants should be warned of the risk of serious complications, including fatigue, joint pain and the possibility of a rare type of cancer, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday.

Agency officials are urging manufacturers to print a boxed warning on the packaging of the implants, and to provide a checklist spelling out the risks for patients considering surgery. It will be left to doctors to review those risks with women seeking breast implants.

The measures are not mandatory and are now open to public comment and industry input. But the recommendations reflect a growing acknowledgment at the agency that implants may cause more harm in women than previously known.

Several years ago, the agency linked implants to a rare form of immune system cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma. In July, at the request of the F.D.A., one manufacturer, Allergan, recalled textured breast implants linked to the cancer.

More recent studies have reported higher rates of autoimmune disease among women with breast implants. Advocates for women with these complications called the F.D.A.’s proposals on Monday “an important step,” but noted that the action is only a recommendation.

“What matters most is what happens next,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research in Washington, who has analyzed breast implant studies and has been advising patients.

She said surgeons should be required to go over the checklist with prospective patients before they put down a deposit.

“If breast implants can cause cancer of the immune system, doesn’t it make sense they can cause other systemic problems of the immune system?” Dr. Zuckerman asked.

Millions of women have implants, silicone sacks filled with saltwater or silicone gel that are used to enlarge the breasts for cosmetic reasons or to rebuild them after a mastectomy for breast cancer.

Breast augmentation with implants is the most popular cosmetic surgical procedure. Some 313,000 augmentations were performed in 2018, a 4 percent increase over the number in 2017. Breast reconstruction after cancer surgery accounts for another 100,000 procedures.

But thousands of women with implants have reported developing debilitating illnesses, such as severe muscle and joint pain, weakness, cognitive difficulties and fatigue — a constellation of symptoms some experts call “breast implant illness.”

Some of the ailments are forms of connective tissue disease, which includes lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other serious autoimmune conditions.

Dr. Zuckerman has found that most breast implant studies were carried out by manufacturers or plastic surgery associations and did not track long-term outcomes, or lost so many participants to follow-up that results were not meaningful.

The studies focused on well-defined illnesses, she said, ignoring debilitating symptoms that lacked specific diagnoses, and most were too small to detect rare diseases.

Earlier this year, the agency warned two implant manufacturers that they had failed to carry out adequate long-term safety studies of implants, which had been mandated as a condition of their approval.

The proposed checklist and boxed warning were developed in response to demands by patients who testified last March at an advisory panel meeting about illnesses they blamed on their implants.

Breast implants and mammography: what we know and what we don’t know

Breast Cancer, Prevention, Uncategorized, ,
Elizabeth Santoro, RN, MPH and Dr. Diana Zuckerman

There has been a lot of attention given to mammography screening in recent years. Some of this information has been confusing to women—at what age should I first have a mammogram, how frequently should I have repeat mammograms, and are mammograms even effective? These are questions that women both with and without breast implants have been trying to understand. Despite this confusion, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening every two years for women ages 50-74 who have an average risk of breast cancer. Women at high risk because of family history, BRCA gene mutations, or other reasons should discuss a screening schedule with their doctor.  But, what does this mean for women who have breast implants? Are women with breast implants faced with different risks when undergoing a mammography screening? Will women with implants require special considerations during the procedure?

Delayed Breast Cancer Detection

Breast implants can interfere with the detection of breast cancer, because the implants can obscure the mammography image of a tumor. Implants therefore have the potential to delay the diagnosis of breast cancer. Although mammography can be performed in ways that minimize the interference of the implants, as described below, Miglioretti and her colleagues found that even so, 55% of breast tumors were missed, compared to 33% of tumors for women without implants.1  They also found that among newly diagnosed breast cancer patients who did not have any symptoms, the augmented women had larger tumors than those who did not have implants.

What is the impact of this possible delay in diagnosis?  Research findings have been inconsistent, but a 2013 Canadian systematic review of 12 studies found that women with breast cancer who had breast implants are diagnosed with later-stage cancers than women with breast cancer who did not have implants.2

A delay in diagnosis could result in the woman needing more radical surgery or the delay could be fatal.  A 2013 Canadian meta-analysis of five studies found that if women who had breast augmentation later developed breast cancer, they were more likely to die from it than women diagnosed with breast cancer who did not have breast augmentation.3

These studies indicate that for an individual woman, a delay in diagnosis could potentially result in death, and more research is needed to determine how often that happens, and under what circumstances. From a public health perspective, delays in diagnosis could potentially necessitate more radical surgery: a cancer that could have been treated at an earlier stage with breast-sparing treatments, such as lumpectomy, may instead require a mastectomy.3,4

What are the other possible problems that implants can cause regarding mammography?

A study by FDA scientist Dr. S. Lori Brown and colleagues describes problems that were reported to the FDA related to breast implants and mammography screening.5 The authors found 66 adverse events that were reported as either occurring during the mammogram or involving breast implants interfering with the mammogram. Forty-one reports of either silicone or saline breast implants- – almost two out of three reports– pertained to ruptures that were suspected as happening during mammography. The other 25 reports included delayed breast cancer detection, inability to perform the mammogram due to capsular contracture or because of fear that the implant would rupture, and pain/soreness during and after the procedure.

Description of the FDA Study

This study examined data from the Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database. This FDA database collects mandatory or voluntary reports of medical device adverse events from physicians, breast implant manufactures, consumers, and others. The reports were received between June 1992 and October 2002 for events that occurred between June 1972 and June 2002. The mean age of the implant was 14.5 years, and ranged from 2-29 years.

The use of the MAUDE database has limitations. The FDA does not verify the information that is provided. Therefore, the FDA cannot guarantee that the information is accurate and complete. In addition, in some cases, a doctor and a patient could potentially report the same problem.  On the other hand, most problems are not reported even once, since patient and physician reporting is voluntary. It is well-documented that the vast majority of problems arising from medical products are not reported to the FDA. As a result of these shortcomings, these data cannot be used to calculate the number of new adverse events expected for a given number of people in a defined time period.

Key Implications of the Studies on Implants and Mammograms

Potential Implant Rupture

The FDA warns that all implants will eventually break, and research shows that most women who have implants for ten years or longer will have at least one broken implant.6 The risk of breast implant rupture is known to increase as the implant ages. A study by Holmich and colleagues suggested that during the first ten years a woman has implants, most implants do not break, between 11-20 years most will break, and by the time they are more than 20 years almost all have broken.7 Women with implants have been told that mammography is safe for them, but the results of the Brown study suggest that the risk of rupture can be exacerbated by mammography.

Brown and her colleagues also reviewed the published research on implant rupture during mammography and found an additional 17 cases reported in medical journals. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, approximately half of the women who get breast implants are in their 20′s or early 30′s,8 which means that the implants are already broken or vulnerable by the time these women are old enough for screening mammograms.

Mammography may therefore increase the risk of a rupture earlier in the typical lifespan of implants, and the squeezing involved in mammography probably increases the risk of leakage in implants that are already ruptured. The potential risk of rupture or leakage needs to be weighed against the benefits of mammography by each individual woman. For women who are concerned about breast cancer, knowledge of mammography problems might discourage women from getting breast implants, or encourage them to have their implants removed and not replaced. Current guidelines encourage women with breast implants to have regular mammograms provided that the technician knows the woman has implants prior to the procedure and that special techniques are utilized.6 In light of this new research, those guidelines need to be reconsidered, especially for women with silicone gel breast implants, where leakage can cause permanent disfigurement and has unknown health risks.

Avoidance of Mammography

The Brown study also found that implants sometimes make it impossible to perform a mammogram. This can happen for two reasons. First, conditions such as capsular contracture, where the scar tissue around the implant tightens and causes the breast to become hard and misshapen, can make it very difficult or even impossible to perform the mammogram.9, 10 The compression of the breast that is required in order to perform the mammogram can be extremely painful if there is capsular contracture, and in some cases the hardness of the breast makes it impossible to compress the breast for the mammogram. Some women avoid getting mammograms because they are afraid of rupture and the latest research indicates that this is a reasonable concern.

Biomaterials testing of breast implants indicates that implants should only break under the most traumatic circumstances, and yet implants break for no apparent reason, as well as under pressure from mammograms.11 It is difficult to know how much risk a mammogram increases the risk of rupture since so little is understood about why implants break and under what circumstances.

What Does this Mean for Women?

Women considering breast implants and women with breast implants need to be informed consumers, and that includes knowing about the problems that arise from having mammograms with breast implants. This is true for all women, but especially breast cancer patients who may use implants on a healthy breast so that it will match the reconstructed breast after a mastectomy. (Detection of cancer in the reconstructed breast is unlikely to be a problem because mammography is not used after a mastectomy. Since breast cancer survivors are at greater risk for breast cancer in the breast that was not removed, compared to women who have not had breast cancer, survivors should have regular mammograms of the surviving breast, and need to know the risks.

Women with breast implants and those considering breast implants need to know that they will have a different mammography experience than women without implants, to try to improve the accuracy. The special techniques used will push the implant back to try to move it out of the way, and extra views will be taken. Even so, as reported earlier in this article, mammograms performed on women with implants will still miss more tumors than is typical of mammograms for women who do not have implants.7, 12 In addition, women with implants should expect that mammography will require more views and take longer, thus costing more and exposing them to increased levels of radiation. Unfortunately, the most common problem, capsular contracture, can make mammography more painful, less accurate, or even impossible to perform. In such cases other, more expensive tests, such as an MRI or ultrasound, may be required.

Women also need to understand that even if breast implants do not cause contracture or other problems, they will still interfere with mammography and mammograms might still cause rupture and leakage.

The bottom line is that women considering breast implants and those who already have them need to be informed about potential problems with mammography so that they can make the decisions that will help them reduce the risk of breast cancer and avoid the problems that arise with implant breakage and leakage.

For more information on breast implants, see www.breastimplantinfo.org.

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2016 Update: When should women start regular mammograms? 40? 50? And how often is “regular”?