Short YouTube video (short) in which Robert Whitfield MD discusses a patient who requested en bloc removal of her breast implants. The surgeon defines “en bloc” (a pathology term meaning removal of a tumor and surrounding tissue in one undisturbed piece), explains the patient wanted the implant and its surrounding capsule removed together, and uses an "Easter egg" analogy to illustrate removing the implant without breaking it. The clip frames the request as unusual and clarifies implant vs. capsule removal options.
Okay, so she was healthy.
Yeah, one complaint. Bad fatigue.
Oh, okay, so she wasn't healthy. People who are tired aren't healthy unless.
It'S because they didn't sleep or they ate crap. But the predominant thinking, Dave, is if you had cancer and you were treated with poison to cure your cancer, and you had bone marrow suppression, that explains your fatigue. And I was in that lane. That's what I thought.
That's what you believed.
So I took her to the operating room. Ah, there's one caveat. She asked me to do something I'd never been asked before by a patient. She said, can you take out my implants en bloc? And so for the audience, en bloc is a term used in pathology. It's tumor extirputation. Extirpation or removal is done en bloc, say, for a sarcoma or any cancer, you want to be around it, not in it.
Okay, so.
She wanted you to take the tissue around.
The capsule, the scar capsule and.
The implant together. So when I talk about it, I say it's like taking things out in an undisturbed manner, like not breaking the Easter egg.
Okay, so the Easter egg, just for listeners, you have the silicone or whatever, the bag of fluid is made out.
Of the implant.
And then you have a scar.
Capsule around it that your body made.
And you could take out just the implant and leave the scar.
