A short excerpt from a YouTube interview with Robert Whitfield MD discussing management of breast implant pockets after explantation and how infections are identified and treated. Whitfield emphasizes changing pocket-management techniques, mentions use of pH-lowering solutions rather than relying on topical antibiotics/antifungals, and describes CLIA-culture practices that label growth above 100,000 colony units as infection.
Questions this video answers
Growth above 100,000 colony units.
Chapters
So explain that difference because some people may have gotten already their breast explants and were told they were negative for infection and never treated. Do you then need to go back and do anything different?
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I haven't, I've had people come with incomplete capsule resections and I've taken care of them. It just became really. It was obvious that what we were doing, whether it was placement or removals or explants, something needed to be changed in terms of how you manage the pocket. So a lot of people are worried about not just placement of implants, but somebody who gets a capsular contractor. So a lot of research was done using solutions that lower the pH. And in particular, if you think about it, that makes much more sense because then it's not dependent upon basitracin, which is an antibiotic, or clindamycin, which is antibiotic, or anything any antifungal put in there. So in a CLIA based system, you swab the pocket using the Q tip and you rub it on a plate once it gets to the lab. And then it has to grow above a hundred thousand colony units for them to. Then the lab tech to go, oh yeah, this is infection.
