Robert Whitfield MD noticed his reconstructive surgery practice got flooded with explant requests after being added to a Facebook group about breast implant illness. Most callers were cosmetic patients, not his usual cancer reconstruction cases, showing how social media can shift patient demand.
This all went away. But then she put me on a Facebook group that does discusses breast implant illness and explant surgery. And then all of a sudden, I just had people start calling my office to have explant surgery, which I was a breast reconstruction surgeon and did microvascular breast reconstruction, head and neck reconstruction, sarcoma reconstruction. So my office was like, why are people calling about that? Right, right. Because it was cosmetic patients basically calling to have an explant, not a cancer pat.
