If you have not read my initial post on Breast Implant Illness, I recommend you do so now. In fact, I implore you to read it. Here’s the link. https://www.sowdermd.com/blog/breast-implant-illness/.
I belong to a few physician only message boards and breast implant illness has been a hot topic in the past few months. It is interesting to see what other plastic surgeons think and especially what physicians in other specialties think about this controversial topic. These boards encourage free discussion without anyone being shut down, banished, blocked, or slammed on social media. This makes me grateful to be part of a group of professionals that value serious and candid discussion of complicated issues. Here I present a few thoughts I have curated from the past several months.
Dry eye and breast implants: Many, many ophthalmologists weighed in on this one. The consensus is that dry eye is very common in middle aged women. Women are 10 times more likely to develop dry eye. One doc said 80% of his female patients over 50 had dry eye. Conditions that contribute to dry eye include previous eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty), too much screen time, and some medications including SSRI antidepressants. Implants? No support for that theory from any of the ophthalmologists. My ophthalmologist, who recently did my cataract surgery, looked at me like I was nuts when I asked him about implants and dry eye. The eye docs also reminded us that silicone products are used extensively in ophthalmology: punctal plugs for dry eye, silicone stents for nasolacrimal duct reconstruction, silicone buckles used to treat retinal detachment, silicone oil used as a replacement for vitreous humor in the posterior chamber (eyeball), silicone intraocular lenses used after cataract extraction and finally silicone contact lenses. WOW. That’s a boat load of silicone.
Mold and biotoxins: General consensus from internal medicine and infectious disease is that patients ill with systemic fungal infections should be in the intensive care unit. None of the plastic surgeons, with one exception, had seen a case of mold growing in a saline implant. I added up the years of practice and it came to about 250 years. That is a lot of experience. One plastic surgeon who has written a book on BII seems to see mold and biotoxins wherever she looks. She puts her implant removal patients on extensive anti-fungal therapy post-operatively. She has extensive experience with mold and biotoxins but has not been published in any recognized peer reviewed medical journals. Her reason for not doing so has something to do with being targeted by Big Pharma. Hmmm.
Autoimmune issues: There were several rheumatologists weighing in on silicone triggered illness. Their opinions varied from no evidence whatsoever to there are some individuals who are genetically susceptible to autoimmune diseases (this is well known) and exposure to silicone may trigger the onset of disease in these individuals. It was noted that women are affected by autoimmune disease about 4 times more commonly than men. One infectious disease doctor thinks breast implants caused slceroderma (which is very, very serious connective tissue disorder and is usually fatal) in 6 of his patients. He recommended checking how wide an implant patient can open her mouth to diagnose early perioral and TMJ fibrosis and scleroderma. The rheumatologists thought that this doc was really out there. The plastic surgeon who has written a book on BII, who is not a rheumatologist, stated that rheumatoid arthritis is caused by an intracellular mycoplasma infection and she can cure rheumatoid arthritis and scleroderma with non-conventional therapy. None of the rheumatologists believed her. They all wondered why she had not published her results in a peer reviewed medical journal. Same answer. Big Pharma.
Breast Implant Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma: It is rare. It is treatable if caught early. It is really creepy. It is associated with textured breast implants and/or tissue expanders. The plastic surgeon who wrote the BII book stated that BIA-ALCL was the most common cause of death in her implant patients prior to 2005. It was pointed out by several other doctors that BIA-ALCL was recognized as a disease around 2012.
Other stuff: Many of the internal medicine docs, ER docs, pain specialists, psychiatrists and OB-gyns weighed in on so called functional and somatic disorders including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, pelvic congestion, brain fog, anxiety, poor memory. depression, and malaise as primarily affecting women and pointed out that the vast majority of these women with these disorders do not have breast implants. This chatter of functional and somatic disorders made me think of the Freudian disorder of “hysteria” of yesteryear which was supposedly caused by the uterus wandering around looking for a baby. This sort of stuff gets my hackles up a bit, being a woman and all. One doctor wondered if there were any male to female transgender individuals with breast implant illness. Now that is a great question.
Future research: Everyone pretty much agreed that a large, multi-center, long term (10+ years) may help answer many questions about breast implants. Several plastic surgeons, myself included, pointed out that the dismal long term follow-up in previous studies was in part due to patient non-compliance with follow-up. I know this will make a lot of people angry but it is really true. Back when gel implants were only available through studies like the one I participated in, once patients had their coveted gel implant, they were gone, gone, gone. My follow-up for the McGahn study was about 80% which is really high because my staff and I pestered the participants mercilessly to come in for their appointments. Once doc suggested maybe a prison study using inmates with really long sentences. Maybe this could be Orange in the New Black meets Extreme Makeover?
Breast implants in general: Whoa, were there some strong opinions about this. Many, many non-plastic surgeons think any woman who gets implants is by definition is a mentally impaired bimbo. One doc divulged that his wife was going to get implants to treat her postpartum atrophy and boy did he get an earful! Many of the male doctors assumed that she was preparing to leave him once he had paid for her surgery! Such cynicism. But there was one family practitioner who has had the same set of implants for over 30 years (!) who said they absolutely changed her life. She went from a wallflower to a confident young woman. She even credits her implants for giving her the confidence to apply to medical school!
Plastic surgery and plastic surgeons in general: Some of the docs think that any sort of appearance altering surgery (except for obvious reconstructive procedures) was morally and intellectually bankrupt. This was an opinion shared by many anesthesiologists! Weird, huh? I wonder if my anesthesia group thinks they are slumming to work in my OR? I guess I should ask. Many of the male docs stated they didn’t need plastic surgery because their female partners found them totally smokin’ hot just the way they are. Hmmmm. Some of the docs think we plastic surgeons are a bunch of money grubbing fools. Oh well. I chalk that one up to jealousy. ; )
So there you have my carefully collected and curated review of some wild times on the doctor only message boards. You too can join a doctors only message board but first you have to finish medical school.
Thanks for reading and check out my Instagrams @sowdermd and @breastimplantsanity. Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder