Plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Whitfield shifted from inserting breast implants to removing them after seeing complications like capsular contracture and red, tight chests. He describes a breast cancer survivor who wanted her implants out after twenty years, choosing to be flat instead.
You put them in. Yes. And you've taken probably more out than you've put in? By far, yes. All right. So most people who put breast implants into women will sort of tell you on swear, on penalty of death, breast implants are harmless. But at some point you must have had a wake-up call to figure out that this wasn't working. What was your wake-up call?
Okay. All right. So for me, I didn't put in a large number of implants. I took a large number out. And when I look back at my experience, I was taking care of folks with this problem without knowing I was taking care of folks with this problem. Okay. Somebody would show up with a red chest, a tight band feeling across their chest, a capsule contracture, very firm implant. And I knew, I'm like, well, if I just take that out and I take all the scar out and I put their own tissue there, then It's autologous. It'll, it'll, it'll heal. It'll work. All right. So moving forward, in 2016, I had a breast cancer patient who relocated from Georgia to retire here in Austin on the lake. And she came to me and said, I want my reconstruction taken down, Dr. Whitfield MD. And I said, okay. There was no specific reason. She just wanted to be flat. She was tired of having a reconstruction. She had had one for over 20-some years.
