This week, Audrey Rowen, PA-C, of The Center for Natural Breast Reconstruction answers your question about breast reconstruction.
Question: I had silicone implants in 1988 under skin, which ruptured. In 2012, had bilateral implant exchange with saline implants under muscle. In 2016, the right saline implant ruptured; it was always hard with capsular contraction. I have been trying to find a plastic surgeon who will do a capsulectomy on Rt & Lt… and ideally tissue transfer from my body. (I read the FDA has 356 MDRs of lymphoma including 9 deaths, with saline implants, mostly textured but also smooth.) So, as long as I have a rupture (the right breast is flattened), I may as well have both saline’s removed. Does the fat transfer go under the skin or muscle? Would this be a good option for me at this point? Is the capsulectomy better than the explant-ation? Of course, it also depends on cost! Thank you.
Answer: Thanks for reaching out! I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had quite a lot of trouble with implants over the years. Were your implants placed for reconstruction or for cosmetic purposes? We do a lot with both implant reconstruction and natural tissue, both of which are almost always placed above the muscle. Our office also mostly prefers to use smooth silicone gel implants instead of saline, and we choose not to use textured implants often for a few reasons, one of them being what you researched about the Anaplastic large cell lymphoma.
The biggest question that determines what your best options would be whether you had a breast cancer diagnosis or other factors that would make your case reconstruction vs. cosmetic. Once we get that information from you, I feel we can better give you an idea of what we might be able to do for you.
I look forward to hearing back from you to see how we can help you!
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