Silicone regains popularity
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By Jeff Raymond
Published: November 28, 2007
After ending a 14-year hiatus from the market last November, silicone breast implants are gaining in popularity in Oklahoma.
The Food and Drug Administration pulled silicone implants, which doctors describe as having the consistency of gummy bear candy, from the market in 1992 after women reported they leaked, causing disfigurement and disease.
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‘Generic vs. brand name'
Dr. Juan Brou, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Oklahoma City, said he often performed secondary breast surgery in which a woman returns because she is dissatisfied or her implants need to be replaced. Breast augmentation is not a one-time procedure.
The number of women who ask for silicone has grown tenfold in the last year, he said, adding that women now have an option they didn't have before.
Nevertheless, he said, "There's still a lot of people with a lot of reservations about silicone. They're mostly unfounded I think.”
When patients ask him which implant he recommends, he tells them the silicone model is lighter, softer and a better match for women's tissue. However, saline implants cost about $4,200 compared to $5,200 for the silicone option.
"It's like generic versus brand name,” he said.
Insurance normally does not pay for breast augmentation.
Are new models safer?
Brou performs more than 120 breast augmentations a year. Last year, about 30 percent were silicone. Still, although better-engineered implants have made doctors willing to use them and patients increasingly asking for them, each woman is unique.
"I don't think it's a time bomb, and the timing is different from one woman to another,” Brou said. "I think the great majority of people are perfectly happy with their results, and the minority experience complications that are mild.”
Dr. Stephen C. Gauthier, an Oklahoma City plastic surgeon who is completing board certification, said about three-quarters of his patients prefer silicone.
"The thing that patients need to remember is that even saline implants have a silicone shell,” he said, adding that the silicone wouldn't escape from the new models.
However, he said, plastic surgeons should provide options and not attempt to talk patients into choosing one implant over the other. Also, the FDA does not allow silicone implants in women who are younger than 22 years old.
Using silicone in medicine is nothing new, Gauthier noted. He uses the substance on the skin of burn patients at Integris Baptist Medical Center. He said he hopes new implants would last longer than their predecessors, perhaps longer than 15 years.
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If using God as an excuse, the bible also says "thou shall not judge". To each his own.