Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Explant Surgery Risks Revealed: What You NEED To Know! #shorts

26 Dec 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:05

Robert Whitfield MD covers breast explant surgery risks and complications. Explant is done for breast implant illness, reconstruction reversal, or post-cancer closure. Risks mirror implant surgery, except pneumothorax (air entering the chest) is rare but possible. Whitfield has performed nearly 1,200 explants with five pneumothorax cases.

Questions this video answers

Almost 1,200 explants (speaker's personal count).

Five cases of pneumothorax in ~1,200 explants.

Chapters

Doctor Whitfield and welcome to my breast implant illness podcast. Today's question that we're going to look into deeper is are there any risks or complications associated with breast explant surgery? So breast explant surgery is performed for a variety of reasons. Most commonly my practice for breast implant illness, it can be obviously performed for somebody who's tired of having their reconstruction, just wants it taken down, wants to go back to a natural result or a breast cancer patient who's flat. I've had a experience in all of those, relatively large experience obviously in breast implant illness Risk and complications associated with explants are basically the same with implants with a couple caveats. There is an incidence of entering the chest cavity, which is called a pneumothorax in augmentations. It's low. Personally, I've done over almost 1200 explants at this point and that instance where you get pneumothorax has happened to me in five cases in, you know, almost 1200, you know, explants. So super low incidence.