Breast Implant is a very common surgery in the modern medical technology, but every patient wonders how much risk is associated with this before undergoing this operation. Breast implants are of two types, saline and silicone and the risk associated with both types differ. This is why the FDA has approved the saline implant for females who have attained eighteen years and older while a lady will need to reach the age of twenty-two to be able to use silicone implant.
There have been no documented or verified risk with use of implant or its rupture (as the case may be in few times) but the two implants differ in content and their contents have different reactions to the body which is why the bar has been set differently for different ages who intend to use the breast implants.
For example, both implants require a silicone coat. However, the saline breast implant Thailand uses salt-water or saline as the content inside the silicone bag while the silicone implant has a silicone gel inside. In the case of a rupture, the saline will be easily taken up into the body while the silicone gel will begin to spread into the lymph which is where health concerns come in.
Also, a saline implant leak can easily be detected because the breast changes shape almost immediately but a silicone leak has little or no symptom. A silicone leak can only be accurately detected using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The FDA therefore advises women that have had silicone implants to go for MRI at least once every three years. MRI procedure is usually very costly (sometimes more than the surgery itself) which is a grave disadvantage to the patient.
Another major difference between the two implants is that the shape of the silicone implant cannot be altered once it has been inserted if not replaced with a new one. However, saline implants can be altered without necessarily going through any surgical process. All that the physician has to do is to insert a syringe into the implant and thus extract or add more saline.
There may be other unpleasant observations that can result from implants. One of them is the formation of scar tissues. Scar tissues are the body’s way of reacting to the presence of an object alien to the body. This could lead to some level of pain and there could also be discoloration of the nipple. Most of the witnessed rupture of implants is because the scar tissues form around the implants and squeeze them.
Other risks that may be associated with implants includes; skin rash, redness or bruising, palpability, necrosis, change in the sensation of the nipple, lymphedema, inflammation, opportunistic infection from delayed healing, hematoma, deformation of the chest wall and so on.
The major health concern women are afraid of is cancer but research has shown over the years that there is no link between the implants and cancer meaning that they are not carcinogenic. The associated problems that may arise from implants are often immunological response to body changes or as a result of infections that come from poor hygiene of the environment where the surgery was performed.