Dr. Robert Whitfield tested 694 explanted breast implants and found bacteria in 29% of them, primarily Staphylococcus epidermidis and Klebsiella magnus. Both form biofilms that the body struggles to clear, which he argues is clinically significant for understanding breast implant illness.
I thought that was a great piece of work and research that he did. And then what I did was when I was president-elect of the Research Foundation, I gave testimony at the FDA hearings in 2019 that I had helped fund research about breast implant illness and tried to better understand it. So that happened, and one of the papers that were published showed that there was 48% bacterial contamination rate in the study. The study was kind of smaller, and so in my own personal experience, I didn't feel that number was appropriate. I thought it was too high. So we published a portion of my experience, 694 consecutive explant specimens to look at the scar tissue, and it showed that 29% had bacterial contamination, predominantly with Staph epidermidis, and the other dominant bacteria were Klebsiella magnus. Both of them readily form groups together, which basically is biofilm, like little communities or villages of bacteria. And then they're hard to eradicate. Your body, like I said, can't do a good job doing that.
