Robert Whitfield MD discusses whether breast implants affect breastfeeding and screening. Implants haven't been shown to prevent breastfeeding, though mastitis risk may increase. QT imaging, a radiation-free ultrasound technique, could become standard for screening implanted breasts.
February 3, 2025
Does having breast implants affect breastfeeding in any way?
It hasn't been shown to do that. I get concerned. We just had patient recently kept having mastitis with breastfeeding and had a breast implant. And so I immediately start worrying about what we discussed earlier about just the bacterial colonization of the breast and how is that affecting the underlying. Is that affecting the underlying breast implant? And no one has that answer.
Interesting.
I don't have that.
Well, women with breast implants, presumably, I mean, are breastfeeding all the time. Yeah, yeah. What about mammograms? Does having implants affect that?
No, it's. It's more about where you go. So in those tertiary centers where we did a lot of breast cancer reconstruction, they were more specialty type imaging because they would still have to get image, because many patients were required still to get mammography, even if they had mastectomies, depending on the, the provider's preferences. And so those were the people that we would always send the patients to those imaging type centers. So no, it should not impede screening or anything like that. And as we get into the next generation of screening, there's something called QT imaging, which uses high frequency ultrasound that should, I mean, over time become the standard. It's non invasive and no radiation.
Yeah, I mean, you know, preventative health care is so important. So.
