Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Comprehensive Guide to Breast Implant Removal with Dr. Robert Whitfield

12 Jan 2018 · 1 min

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1:09

Dr. Robert Whitfield explains his approach to removing breast implants in symptomatic patients. He reports over 90% achieve some symptom relief and describes common findings: bacterial-positive cultures, capsular contracture, nerve pain, shoulder dysfunction, and ruptured implants. He uses a 14-point safety protocol to minimize complications.

Questions this video answers

Well above 90% (he states 'well above 90% of the patients achieve some level of symptom relief').

14-point step plan.

Chapters

I just try to listen and understand what is going on, what are their symptoms and what can I offer them. And to that end, I've had a lot of success treating these patients. I think they're patients with really high satisfaction after surgery when they've kind of exhausted all their medical options. They kind of look at the implant as a foreign body and trying to get it removed. I found these to have, on closer examination after the fact, cultures that were positive for bacteria, so they really had an infection. I found them to have capsular contractures, significant amounts of scarring, entrapping the two pec muscles, making the range of motion limited. Given nerve pain, shoulder dysfunction. I will not say that it's resolved every single person's symptoms 100% of the time, but well above 90% of the patients achieve some level of symptom relief. I've found people with ruptured implants leaking silicone is never good to have in your body. So I feel that the justification for the procedure makes sense. I think it all goes back to technically performing a sound operation at the first encounter so that you follow these steps. A 14 point step plan that we've all adopted to be safe and use good technique to place these devices so that we reduce these problems for patients.