PIP Implant Replacement Surgery with Silicone Gel Bleed
20th February 2012Facelift Surgery
Surgery video of intact PIP implants replacement procedure performed here at Aurora clinics in Buckinghamshire. The PIP implants have been inserted in 2009 by a different clinic, and although they were not ruptured, there was quite a lot of silicone gel coming out through their shell, causing a significant amount of fluid to form inside the breast capsule. Mr. Richards of Aurora clinics replaces the 330 cc PIP implants with 350 cc Nagor implants which are UK manufactured and are 4th generation silicone gel implants. For more information, or if you are concerned about your PIP implants, please call our free Office number 0800 328 5743 and book a free consultation with any of our highly qualified plastic and reconstructive breast surgeons.
Transcript
We’re going to be doing an operation today on a lady who had bilateral breast augmentation with 330 PIP implants in 2009. So I’ll be taking you through each stage of the operation now.
The first stage is just to remove the old scar. I’m just going to cut around the old scar now, and I’m taking it out because that will be back to fresh tissue and give us the best possible scar. This is just a bit of skin I’ve removed from the scar. So we’re back to non-scar tissue on either side, which will stitch better.
Then the next stage is just to cut down onto the implant like that. I’ll show you what the implant looks like in a second.
I’m just going to expose the breast implant. I’ll know immediately whether . . . there’s quite a lot of fluid here. This is quite characteristic of PIP. Can you see all that fluid is coming out? Have you got a little thing to hold it with? These implants have only been in two years, well, since 2009, and look at all this fluid around it. This is not normal. See all this fluid? We’ll send some off to be analysed. Normally you wouldn’t see this amount of fluid around an implant. I think it’s due to the poor quality of the silicone implant shell. Can you see all that fluid there? That is not normal to have around an implant. We’ll send it off and have it analysed now.
This is intact, this implant, but as in all PIPs I take out, you can feel there is gel bleeding through. We think this is because when they make an implant, they dip it in silicone, and the PIPs reduce the amount of dip, so the amount of layers. It seems that the layer that we’re losing is the sealant layer which stops the silicone coming through. So this really makes the implant permeable to silicone. Normally, when you remove an implant, it would be dry. It wouldn’t have silicone on the outside, which is sort of leeching through. The PIPs, every one I’ve taken out, even if it’s intact, has a lot of silicone on the outside, which is taken up by the body’s defences and we think that is because of the decrease in the layers, the barrier layer, of the PIP implant.
Our patient today has elected to have replacement with a Nagor implant, 330cc implant, which is a very similar shape to the one she had before. As you can see, it’s much softer than those PIP implants, no gel bleed, and a much more reliable shell.
So now I’m just going to cut down onto the implant here and see if there’s any fluid in this one. Is there any fluid in this one? Not so much fluid in this one. No, not as much fluid in this one, which is interesting.
Again, we can see this implant is an intact PIP implant, but it’s got a lot of silicone gel bleed. Every PIP I’ve found has got this silicone gel bleed on the outside. Don’t know whether you can see it. Can you see it there? Normal implants wouldn’t have that, and again it’s because, I think, of the lack of the extra protective layer that seals the implant that was done in the dipping process. So we haven’t got a sealing layer probably, and that’s why we’ve got all this silicone gel bleed on the outside. Again, at least it’s intact and less fluid on this side.
This is the appearance at the end of the operation. I’ve replaced the implants with exactly the same size, 330 Nagor implants. This is the incision, which I’ve covered up in brown tape and it is stitched with an absorbable stitch and it’s exactly the same that side. Here we’ve got quite a good appearance from the bust, and most importantly we’ve replaced those PIP implants, which had all that silicone gel bleed on them.
Here are the PIP implants. As you can see, this is one from the right. When they’re actually out of the body, they don’t have that silicone gel on the outside, so they appear quite dry. This one has been out for about half an hour now, and as you can see, there’s no silicone bleed. That stops when it’s out of the body. We can probably see . . . I don’t know whether you can see that, but that says PIP 330cc implant.
The left one is pretty much the same, slightly different colour. Sometimes they are slightly different colours. Normally the one that’s in worse condition is slightly more yellowy. So that’s the left one. We can see again, let’s turn it the right way up, it was a PIP 330cc implant. This one was the last one I took out, probably about 15 minutes ago, and this is still slightly slimy, although it doesn’t have that silicone gel bleed. I think when they’re exposed to the air, the silicone gel bleed does decrease. What we’re going to do now is we’re going to pack these implants up for our patient, and she’ll be able to have them later, as well as the video of the procedure.
Thanks for watching this video. If you’ve got a PIP implant and you’re concerned about it, please contact us at Aurora Clinics. You can look at us on the website or alternatively phone us on 0184 421 4362. We understand that you may be very concerned about PIP implants and certainly a lot of them do seem to have a lot of silicone gel bleed if they’re not ruptured. If you are concerned and feel you may have a problem with your PIP implant, please feel free to contact us.