Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Implant Infection: 3 Opportunities for Contamination Explained #shorts

26 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:17

In this concise educational short, Dr. Robert Whitfield explains how implants—whether orthopedic (hip, knee), cosmetic (breast), or dental—can become infected. He outlines three distinct moments when contamination can occur: (1) when the implant is removed from its outer and inner packaging, (2) during transfer and handling by operating‑room staff, and (3) when the surgeon actually places the device into the patient. He notes that surgeons typically employ a "no‑touch" technique to minimise exposure, and emphasizes that each individual contamination opportunity carries a relatively low risk.

Chapters

Implant based reconstruction or implant implants used for cosmetic purposes certainly can get infected and we can go through you know, briefly how we think that is really happening. So there's three opportunities for an implant to get infected whether it's a hip, knee, breast, dental, whatever the device is. When you take an implant out of a package there's a it's got two packages basically the outer and the inner. So they'll open it and give it to the staff in the operating room and then the final person to open it and say use a breast implant in this case is the surgeon typically and they perform usually a no touch technique typically with whatever they were taught, whatever they're most comfortable with to limit the opportunity for contamination. So they can contaminate when they open it and contaminate when they give it to the surgeon. Surgeon can contaminate when they put it in or putting the device in. All of those are really low.