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How to deal with 16 year old leaking silicon implants?
I’m looking for others’ experience with aging silicon breast implants. I’m 69 and had a unilateral mastectomy with silicon implant 16 years ago after stage 2 infiltrating lobular tumor. The surgeon put in a small cosmetic implant on the healthy breast to give it a more matching rounder appearance. All went well. I’ve had periodic MRIs to check on them. A small leak in the small cosmetic implant was detected a few years ago. My surgeon told me it wasn’t a health risk. Over time the natural breast has slowly dropped while the reconstructed breast has stayed in place. The imbalance is addressed with a bra with a fill-in prosthetic pad under the reconstructed breast. Medicare covers that.
All that said, what do others with silicon implants do when time has passed, breast cancer is in the rearview mirror, and we know implants don’t last a life time. Replace? Remove? Re-work the entire reconstruction to even out the breasts? The surgeon just says it’s up to me, I don’t want to wait too long and be too frail later to have this elective surgery. I’d love to hear thoughts and experiences from others.
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I had breast implant back in 1978, it was due to loosing all the fat tissue in my breasts after two births, I had silicone the first time and I developed an terrible infection and a year later they removed them and were replaced by saline implants, the surgeon said that there’s less chance of the same reaction with them. Several years later it became apparent that my right breast was deformed, due to all the scar tissue inside, this made it impossible for the implant to sit properly. I can definitely hide the differences by wearing a bra because I don’t want to go through more surgery unless it’s necessary, I sometimes want to have them removed but it’s unsightly to see what’s left and also I’ve had two surgeries for cancer so I’m loathe to go to the operating room for ascetic reasons. I’m a senior now and happy to be alive and the rest of my body is aged to match my deformed breasts so it’ll do for now. In your case it’s truly a personal decision that only you can make, many ladies don’t want implants after breast cancer surgery for very viable reasons but at the end of the day it really comes down to what would make you feel better about yourself, best wishes.