A guide to removing breast implant capsules safely and what to look for during the procedure. The speaker walks through how to examine capsular tissue for complications, when to remove it completely versus partially, and how findings change your treatment plan for the patient.
If we never looked, how would we know if there's something there? And the more you look, the more you find, and then you can't look away anymore, you can't avoid it. And so my standard protocol is every capsule gets removed in its entirety. They will go for pathologic analysis. The yield may be low, but it's not zero. 100% of them get bacterial and fungal cultures. The yield is high. Then you have to have conversations with patients if they were symptomatic, and they had colonies of organisms in their in their capsular tissue. We're not talking about swabbing the implant, we're talking about embedded in their capsular tissue. If they've got colonies of organisms in there, you know, if they've got symptoms preoperatively, do they deserve to be on an antibiotic for a more extended period of time? No, they're not classically infected.
