A short YouTube interview with Robert Whitfield MD about breast implants. Whitfield advises that implant decisions (for cancer reconstruction or cosmetic reasons) require informed consent about evolving risks including implant-associated cancers, biofilm, and infection. He notes implants remain the most common reconstruction method in the U.S. and states ~2.2 million implants are placed worldwide annually, a number that is increasing.
Questions this video answers
About 2.2 million implants per year.
Chapters
If somebody is considering implants still today, because we know that I, I'm curious the percentage of people that are getting implants compared to before, knowing what we know now and then also, yeah, somebody's still thinking about getting implants. What do they need? Like, what would you say to them?
So I think when you're, you're going through the process of determining, you know, whether it's for cancer or cosmetics, what are the long term ramifications, you need to understand that this is an evolving issue. There are certain amounts of problems with breast implant associated cancers. Those have to be explained and those are part of the informed decision process. You know, biofilm is part of the informed decision process. Under understanding that implants of any variety can get infected. As just part of the informed decision process. That's still the most common form of breast reconstruction in the United States is still going to be with the implant. Because of the size of the country and the access to that. That's going to be always the form that's most dominant. And then for cosmetics, about 2.2 million implants are placed annually worldwide. And that number is going up, not down.
