Robert Whitfield MD stopped placing breast implants five years ago, preferring fat transfer instead. He emphasizes informed consent: patients should understand risks like breast implant illness before deciding, and the choice is ultimately theirs.
About five years.
Fat transfer (if the patient has enough fat).
People ask me if I would let my daughter get implants. So when you say you're reconstructing breasts with will you even knowing what you know about breast implant illness, do you still put implants in? I haven't put in implants for about five years. But the placement of devices, knowing what we know, it's not that I can't. It doesn't make a ton of sense. When I go back to what we used to do in terms of explaining options to patients who wanted to have an enhancement, it would be, can you use your own tissue? Of course. Because I knew how to do all the other techniques. I would tell them, if you want like a cup size change, then you can do a fat transfer, provide you have enough fat. If you wanted more than, you know, a cup size, then it's going to be another operation or it's going to be an implant. And then you have to discuss the risks and benefits of implants. I think what we hear a lot is patients ended up with a larger implant than they wanted and or they want explained all the things that could happen. People ask me if I would let my daughter get implants. It's always the question to me. So my daughter's a Leo for everybody listening. LeoS don't listen to anybody, much less their fathers, much less one like me who has this much understanding of the problem. So if that woman is focused, that young woman is focused on that body image issue, there's not anything I'm going to say or do that's going to change them doing that. They'll cobble together money and they'll go get it done. The point is, from my perspective, once you have all the information, then you make the decision that's an informed decision. I think people be far less irritated and upset about the process if they made or felt like they made the best informed decision given the information.
