Implant Removal / Replacement

Intact PIP Implants Removal and Replacement Surgery

31st January 2012

Implant Removal / Replacement

Watch a PIP implants removal and replacement surgery operation performed by renowned plastic surgeon Mr. Adrian Richards of Aurora Clinics in Buckinghamshire, UK, In this breast surgery video, Mr. Richards talks you through PIP implants removal and replacement surgery and shows you what an intact PIP implant looks like when removed from the breasts. 450cc intact PIPs are removed from this patient and replaced with best breast implants: 390cc Nagor implants. Although these were not ruptured PIP implants, Mr Richards does note that they feel slimy, with lots of silicone gel around the outside. For more information on PIP implant removal and replacement at Aurora Clinics, please contact info@aurora-clinics.co.uk or 0800 328 5743

Transcript

Hello, my name is Adrian Richards. I’m a plastic surgeon and the Surgical Director of Aurora Clinics, which is based here in the United Kingdom. In this video, I’m going to be showing you an operation I did in which I removed some intact PIP implants from a lady. There’s been an awful lot of information about PIP implants in the press recently. I thought I’d show you in this video what PIP implants look like inside. So please, watch the video. I hope you find it interesting and informative.

Today we’ve got PIP implants which she thinks are 450 ccs. She has quite a long scar underneath here which I’m going to remove. The neatest way to do it is to remove the scar. Then I’ll show you what the implants look like.

So this is just the scar I’ve remove there. Then I’m going to just cut down onto the implant, and we’ll see what the implant looks like. To our knowledge, they’re not ruptured. But you never quite know. This lady may have a silent rupture.

Now I’m just cutting gently down onto where the implant is. I’ll show you when I get on to it in a second. Put the light on that. I don’t know whether you can see, this is the capsule. It’s a quite a thin capsule in our patient today. I’m just cutting down onto the implant, and it doesn’t look like this one is ruptured, which is good news. So there’s no fluid around this PIP implant. It’s not ruptured. There’s a little bit of fluid there actually, but not too much, just a little bit of fluid there. So she’s got some fluid down in that corner. That’s a gel bleed you can get from them. But the implant looks intact. I’ll just get it out now.

I’ve removed the implant. It’s an intact PIP implant, like our patient thought. I don’t know whether you can see. It’s a PIP UH405 cc implant. It’s intact, but it feels slimy. There’s lots of silicone gel on the outside. So we’ll just keep that to show our patient later.

I don’t know whether you can see. Can you see there’s fluid in there? Can you see that fluid there? Would you mind sucking it away for me? Can you see? This is all free silicone fluid in there. This is not normal really to have all this amount fluid around an implant. You wouldn’t normally find it. That, I think, has to do with the quality of the silicone implant. So now what we’ll do, we’ll wash out everything very carefully and get rid of all the silicone. The good news is it wasn’t ruptured, but we have had some silicone gel bleed, and I quite often find that fluid around these PIP implants.

I put my inflatable sizer in here. That’s a temporary implant which I can slowly inflate, just to check that the volume is good for our lady. I’ve also released it inside. I’ve released the capsule inside to give our lady a better cleavage. Quite often, I would always release it inside just to give it a bit more cleavage there. I’m just going to blow it up and see what looks the best fill for our lady today.

So what I’m doing now is just I’m irrigating the pocket out. I’ve got all that nasty fluid out, and now I’m just cleaning everything up around every nook and crevice. Dr. Reeves, could you give a shot of antibiotics now? This is the time we give antibiotics, and we give two doses afterwards. What I’m doing, I’m going to carry on with this, clean everything out, and then I’m going to put a brand new 390 cc Nagor implant in, which I think will look really good on this patient.

Could you put in some antibiotics? This is antibiotics we’re putting into the pocket. This is our new implant, a very good quality 390 cc Nagor implant. I really like these implants which are UK built.

Now I’m on the left side, and I’ve just cut down to the capsule here. So I’m just going to gently cut through the capsule. Normally, if one is intact, the other one is. There’s quite a lot of gel bleed on this one. I don’t know if you can see. Can you see again this fluid here? There’s gel bleeding fluid. Can you see that fluid? Can you suck that away, please, for me? Can you see that fluid? It’s very characteristic, all this fluid. Can you see around the PIP implant? I don’t tend to see this much with other implants. See that’s what happens. The gel isn’t good, and this fluid has silicone in it and that’s what gets taken up by the lymph glands. There’s quite a lot of fluid in there, and that’s quite characteristic. But I don’t think the implant is ruptured. But we have quite a lot of fluid around the implant, which is best removed.

Again, this is the implant removed. Can you see all this fluid and gel bleed around the implant, which is  quite characteristic of PIP implants? Again, I don’t know whether you can see that. It’s the same size, a PIP 405 cc implant. So it’s the same. Ultra, UH I think is a very high profile implant. So it’s a very domed implant. Again, lots of silicone all over the place, and as I said that fluid there. So I’m going to clean everything out now and put a Nagor implant in it, same as the other side.

So in this case, you can see that the PIP implants I removed weren’t ruptured. Now there have been a lot of ruptured PIP implants found, and we know that the rupture rate for PIP implants is significantly higher than other implants. But in this case, you can see there was some silicone gel bleed in the PIP implants, but there wasn’t actually a frank rupture.

Now if you are worried about your PIP implants, some 30,000 to 40,000 people it is estimated in the United Kingdom do have PIP implants. If you’re worried about them, the first thing to do is to get them scanned. You can have a MRI scan which will let you know whether your PIP implants are intact. You can also have an ultrasound, but that’s slightly less exact.

If you know you have PIP implants and you know they’re ruptured, I think probably the thing to do is see a surgeon for a relatively quick either removal or replacement of your PIP implants. If you aren’t sure if you do have PIP implants, probably the best thing to do is contact the surgeon or clinic that originally did you surgery and find out the details from them. Unfortunately, we’ve seen quite a lot of patients who’s companies have gone bust and aren’t available now. So if you’re unfortunate to have your surgery and you think it might be a PIP implant with a company that no longer exists, it’s really very difficult. The only way of finding out whether you do have PIP implants is by surgery, by looking at them.

Please, if you’re worried, contact us. We can arrange a scan for you. We can talk to you. We can reassure you. If necessary, we can talk to you about reduced price surgery, which involves either removal of your PIP implants or replacement of your PIP implants with one of the top brands of implants available in the UK.

Thanks very much for watching. I hope you found this interesting.