A brief YouTube #shorts by Robert Whitfield MD addressing risks and complications of breast explant surgery. He lists common concerns — pneumothorax, hematoma/bleeding, infection, and scarring — and reports low incidence rates based on his personal experience of performing nearly 1,200 explants, noting five pneumothoraces and very few infections or hematomas in recent years.
Questions this video answers
Almost 1,200 explants.
Five cases of pneumothorax.
Chapters
Today's question that we're going to look into deeper is are there any risks or complications associated with breast explant surgery? So breast explant surgery is performed for a variety of reasons. Most commonly my practice for breast implant illness, it can be obviously performed for somebody who's tired of having their reconstruction, just wants it taken down, wants to go back to a natural result or a breast cancer patient who's flat. I've had a experience in all of those, relatively large experience obviously in breast implant illness risk and complications associated with explants are basically the same with implants with a couple caveats. There is an incidence of entering the chest cavity, which is called a pneumothorax, in augmentations. It's low. Personally, I've done over almost 1200 explants at this point. And that instance where you get a pneumothorax has happened to me in five cases in, in, you know, almost 1200, you know, explants. So super low incidence. And I haven't had a hematoma, which is the next thing that I would actually be more concerned about, which is bleeding. And I haven't had one of those in, you know, several years actually. So you. All those things should be low and you know, a skin infection, super low. I don't drain people anymore. I haven't had an infection due to drains in over a couple years, obviously. And I've had one person get an infection when I haven't used drain in an explant only case and had one other infection. So that's super low as well, given how many I do and how high volume practice I have. So it's always bleeding, infection, scarring. All right, so, you know, scarring going to happen because you're reopening an old scar or you're revising a lift scar or you're making a lift scar.
