Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Uncovering Breast Implant Illness: My Journey with Explants

29 Nov 2024 · 2 min

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1:45

Robert Whitfield MD (speaker) recounts an early patient whose fatigue resolved after explant surgery, which led to many referral requests for explants despite his prior focus on cancer and some cosmetic surgery. He describes leadership work with the Aesthetic Societies Research Foundation to fund research into breast implant illness (including psychological studies, a randomized controlled trial, and basic science), references testifying at FDA hearings in March 2019, and reports having performed over 1,100 explant procedures and presented qPCR data examining biofilm on explanted devices.

Questions this video answers

March 2019

Over 1,100 explants

Quantitative PCR (qPCR)

Chapters

Her fatigue went away. And it was like a moment for me where, like, I missed this. And I believe this woman appreciated, you know, how I cared for her. And she put me on, I believe, a Facebook group and said I would, you know, perform an en bloc cap selectomy, and I would listen to her and understand her concern and. And just take care of her. And so I started to have people just, like, show up who wanted explants, which was obviously a little new because my practice has always been caring for cancer patients and to a small degree, cosmetic patients. So I think this just started to trend for people to see me, and it has set off, really, in me, a lot of curiosity about this as a problem without a lot of data around it. So, fast forward, you know, the time I spent in leadership of the Aesthetic Societies Research foundation, we kept trying to figure out ways to advance research for this. When I was president of that foundation, after I testified at the FDA hearings in March of 2019 as President elect, we wanted to fund research for learning more about breast implant illness. So we did that. They did some psychological studies, they did the first randomized controlled trial, and some basic sty. Basic science studies around breast implant illness. And obviously, I've done over 1100 explants, and I have quantitative PCR data about biofilm on these, and I've presented that.