Implant Removal / Replacement

Ruptured Breast Implant Removal and Replacement

9th March 2011

Implant Removal / Replacement

Ruptured Breast Implant Removal and Replacement. Breast implants do rupture and need to be removed. Mr Richards of Aurora-clinics shows you how ruptured breast implants look and how they can be replaced. For more information or should you wish to book a FREE Consultation with our specialist plastic surgeon, please call us on 01844 214362.

Transcript

Ruptured Breast Implant Removal

Hello. My name is Adrian Richards. I’m a plastic and cosmetic surgeon and the Surgical Director of Aurora Clinics. In this short video, I’m going to be showing you a really interesting case of an operation I performed earlier on today. This lady had her breast augmentations done 20 years ago with implants of unknown sizes and unknown shapes. They feel to me as if they’re under the muscle. In these cases, you really have got no idea what you’re going to find. What we found I think was quite interesting in this case.

Here we are at the beginning of the operation. We can see that the implants are behind the muscle and slightly firm. Now she had a very, very unusual scar. Can you see here, laterally, the very long scar there and a further scar there? That’s a very unusual scar for a breast enlargement. It was again on the other side. She’s got a couple of scars there, and those cross marks are old-fashioned cross stitches. But again, very unusual scars for a breast augmentation, and really nowadays we just use that really central bit of the scar there that I’m using here. I wouldn’t use that scar on the side at all because it can be visible.

Here I’ve just developed the plane. Can you see there I’m just holding the pectoralis major muscle in my special instrument there, and now I’m just cutting through into the capsule around the implant. So you’ll see in a minute the implant is ruptured. We didn’t know this before, but as soon as you cut through, you can see the implant’s ruptured. The trick is to try and get as much of the silicone gel out as possible before it contaminates everything because it’s really, really very sticky and it tends to get everywhere. You can see that I haven’t really seen the shell of the implant yet. This is just liquid silicone lying in the pocket.

That’s the old capsule you can see there, which I’m going to sew up. So I’ve irrigated the whole area, cleaned everything out, and now I’m just sewing the two ends of the capsule together. That’s the cut in the capsule where I removed the implant. So I’m just going to sew that together and repair that.

Then I put the temporary sizer in. I’m going to put the implant behind the muscle again in this case and then just check that the implant’s sitting nicely there with the muscle over its top portion so the implant will be well disguised there and hidden in the upper portion with the muscle over it.

So I’ve replaced the area there. The breast is much softer, much more natural feel to it. That’s the incision closed on the bottom with more modern absorbable stitches and just a very small drainage tube.

Here you can see this is what I’ve removed. Can you see there in my hand that’s the shell of the old implant? So it was a thin walled silicone implant with free silicone in it. This is a very old-fashioned type of implant. What I’m trying to do here is trying to find an identification of the implant. Normally it’s stamped on the back of the implant, the make and the size, but I can’t see it in this case because it’s such an old implant with lots of free silicone.

Here you’ll be able to see this is the infiltration I used and the fluid I took out. You can see that I really cleaned the whole area out, and there’s little flakes of calcium from the capsule in there.

Thank you very much for watching the video which I hope you found useful and informative. If you’d like to receive these videos automatically, please subscribe via YouTube or go to our website, Aurora-Clinics.co.uk, where you’ll be able to see and subscribe to get each new video. We’ve also done a number of podcasts, which you can subscribe to on iTunes or again by visiting our website which is either Aurora-Clinics.co.uk or CosmeticCourses.co.uk. These podcasts really cover all areas of plastic and cosmetic surgery and are called the Cosmetic Surgery Podcast and the Plastic Surgery Podcast. Thanks again for watching and we hope you enjoyed the video.