Clinician Robert Whitfield MD discusses breast explant surgery and perioperative care on a YouTube conversation. He describes an in-house functional medicine program (genetics-informed supplementation, in-house testing, and year-long detox plans) used to optimize patients before/after explant. The video covers using autologous fat transfer as an alternative to implants (less likely to cause breast implant illness), challenges for low-BMI patients (DEXA recommended), and pre-/post-op lifestyle advice (pause high-intensity cardio, emphasize resistance training).
Questions this video answers
One year.
DEXA scan.
Is there circumstances where sometimes you remove the implants and the symptoms still don't go away? Or for the most part, are people seeing their health just completely transform?
We started doing and developing our own systems and processes around functional medicine. And we have a whole team of functional practitioners in my clinic. And we do all of our tests and keep it in house now. And we do our detox plans and those run for a year. So when someone comes to us and is going to engage with me for surgery, they start our supplementation and pause theirs as because of how we mentioned it, I want to know they're getting the supplements that are needed based on genetics that we understand. And then they do that series of tests basically to craft the picture of how we're going to help them from a detox standpoint. I get a lot of people coming to me wanted a fat transfer simultaneously. So they want to explant their old implants and they went volume back with their own fat. You know, a lot of toxins hang out in fat. So we're always trying to help people detoxify so they get in better balance. And if I can help them get into a good situation prior to, you know, what is going to be their explant journey. And they can do a fat transfer, we want to just make that as smooth and easy for them as possible. And if we can't, they can do one later. Um, it's everybody's prerogative to do what they want at that time.
So if you are wanting a bigger cup size, but you do not want to get breast implants, you can just transfer fat from another area of your body and there's way less risk as far as breast implant illness or maybe none.
Yeah, it's not going to be a breast implant illness situation. So it would be one, you know, do you have enough fat?
Yeah. Can people with low BMI get a fat transfer?
Yeah. Those are the hardest patients. It seems like my whole career has been defined by seeing how hard a patient I can find to take care of, whether it's breast implant illness or somebody who had breast implant illness who now is super lean, a fitness influencer who now wants a fat transfer and an explant. Those are my most difficult, you know, people. So we want somebody to do what's obviously best that I can do for them in their situation. But people are super low bmi. Have them get a DEXA scan. I have them start eating some fats or just eating in general. You should pause your hit. F45 orange theory, spin cycling. You know, 20 miles a day lifestyle if you want a fat transfer. So I just have women concentrate on resistance because to avoid osteoporosis, it's not that you have to lift weights like a bodybuilder, but you need to move heavy things, do things that create resistance with bands or whatever your choice is, because that's really a better avenue for this.
How long after breast explant surgery does it take to recover?
