Robert Whitfield MD explains why removing breast implant capsules is tricky: calcified tissue can't stay behind, and surgeons often don't see ruptured gel until they've lifted the breast and opened the crease to do a complete removal.
Know, opening those capsules to take the gel out was a mess, and the calcified capsule could not be left behind. Whether you did nothing or whether you put another implant in, because you could feel it. It was. It was pathologic. So I disappointed those patients by telling them they needed an incision in the crease of the breast that they might not have had originally. And then I would lift the breast and skin up, like opening, you know, the hood on your car and expose that capsule into a total capsulectomy. And I never saw the ruptured contents that was in it until it was on the back table.
