Robert Whitfield MD describes how implants get infected: contamination during surgery is rare, but skin bacteria from wounds can seed the bloodstream and colonize implants. Cutibacterium acnes and Staphylococcus epidermidis form protective biofilms that resist immune clearance, and biofilm interactions with breast tissue may trigger the chronic fatigue seen in breast implant illness.
Surgical contaminated on placement. So there's lots of precautions taken in that step. Those two are both relatively low, as they should be, because that's all happening is thereal environment in the operating room. The third and the far most common way is you get a cut, it gets infected, and that seeds your bloodstream and that attaches to the implant because the implant's not alive. No implant can reject the attachment of bacteria because there's no blood supply to an implant that becomes attached. Those aggregate together to form a community. And these bacteria, like cuidibacterium acnes and staph epidermidis, readily produce biofilm, which helps protect them from your body, clearing them. That interaction between the bacterial biofilm and in the breast tissue, oleic acid creates this oxylipin tinhem that we were talking about before we started, and that seems to be what's been shown to be higher in patients who are more symptomatic with breast implant illness, especially with symptoms like chronic fatigue.
