Robert Whitfield MD explains why breast implant illness is hard to diagnose: patients have real systemic symptoms but normal implant exams and lab work. They often get misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia or autoimmune disease instead.
They may have seen their plastic surgeon or another plastic surgeon to have their, you know, exam to see if there's anything wrong with the implant. Could that be the case? And many times there's nothing wrong, nothing that the doctor can find. And they, you know, do lots of blood work. I have folks come from all over the United States see me, and they have fistfuls of papers, blood work, and there's nothing that's really revealed. And so, you know, it's like they become very suspect of the doctor, which I completely understand, because doctors are trained to recognize patterns. And then, you know, they. They can reach a conclusion in conjunction with, you know, laboratory testing, exams their, you know, experience over time. And. And part of the problem with this issue, breast implant illness issue, is it's confusing on physical exam. If in fact findings don't really match up with, say, a badly contracted implant or a really painful implant or redness over the chest on one side indicating an infection or referred to as cellulitis, it creates challenges for the practitioners of all levels, whether they're, you know, patient's primary doctor, maybe it's their ob gyn, maybe they have a functional medicine practitioner, or like I said, their surgeon, their plastic surgeon. They don't know what's going on. So it's often confused with things may be told they have fibromyalgia. They may have signs and symptoms consistent with autoimmune disorders by having a positive ANA on their blood work. Maybe they've seen a rheumatologist and nobody kind of knows what to do with them. So the actual diagnosis of breast implant illness can be very difficult.
