Exchange of PIP Breast Implants with Allergan Silicone Implants
26th March 2012Facelift Surgery
Pip breast implant exchange - surgical video - with Allergan TRF silicone implants performed at Aurora clinics in Milton Keynes by plastic and reconstructive surgeon Adrian Richards. Aurora's patient decided to have her PIP Implants replaced having had concerns about her PIP implants being ruptured. During surgery, it turned out the PIP implants were intact but significant gel bleed was found in the breast pockets which is a specific trait of PIP implants. This leads to formation of silicone granulomas as well as the body trying to absorb the unsafe PIP silicone. After the surgery, our patient was relieved to have had the old PIP implants replaced with high quality Allergan TRF silicone breast implants. For more information about Exchange of silicone implants, or should you wish to book a free consultation with any of our specialist breast surgeons in Harley Street, Northampton, Milton Keynes and Princes Risborough, please call us on 0800 3285743
Transcript
In this video, I’m going to be taking you through an operation. Our patient had PIP implants in 2004. They were 270cc implants, and we’re going to remove her implants and increase the size slightly, probably to between 385 and 450cc with Allergan TRF implants. I will be taking you through each stage of the operation in a minute.
Our lady today has got PIP implants, and I’m going to exchange them. The interesting thing is how long her incision is. I just measured it, and it’s 7.5 centimetres from here to here. Now, that is much longer than we would normally use. We would normally use an incision of about 4.5 centimetres from here to here. You don’t really need this bit here. On the other side, in particular, she doesn’t like this bit because it’s the bit that she can see, and in some items of clothing, if it comes out here like it does on the other side, you can see it. So, really quite a long incision.
What I’m going to do now is remove the implant and exchange it for a slightly larger Allergan TRF implant.
Can you just see? I just opened up the cavity here. Can you just see the silicone gel fluid coming out, and I’ll the rest of that away in a sec. Can you see? That’s the silicone gel fluid that was lying around the implant. And now, just hold on to that, Leslie, if you could. I normally just feel and see how much space there is around the implant, check it’s not upside down, and then just remove the implant. And then, we can see it’s quite a small implant. It was wrinkled. Quite a lot of silicone gel bleed. I don’t know whether you can see that.
So, we’re finding this a lot with the PIPs. They’re deflating at the top here, and they’ve got a lot of gel bleed here, and the sides just need to get the light right so you’ll be able to see this. It’s 270.
So now I’m going to clean everything up, and then I’m going to free up, particularly around here and around here, and then put an intraoperative sizer in. Can you see this? This is the free gel fluid. I don’t know whether you can see it. Can you see it here? This is all free gel which I’ve got to clear up.
I’m taking this implant out on the left. Again, I just check the size. Let’s have a quick look. It’s a 270cc again, and you can see all of the gel bleed there, and again we can see the deflation at the top of the PIP there.
This is the right implant 270cc, 18204. Again, as we’re seeing with a lot of these PIPs, they get very empty in the top portion here because of the silicone gel bleed. This is dry now because the silicone gel bleed is dried on exposure to air. And again, this side on the left, different lot number. It’s 15405. Again, deflation.
So thanks a lot for watching the video. We’d love to hear your feedback on any of the PIP issues. If you’ve got a PIP implant and don’t know what to do with it, please let us know. We’d love to hear your experiences. Thanks for watching.