Dr. Robert Whitfield explains breast implant illness as a chronic inflammatory process where implants may play a role, but aren't the sole cause. Other sources of inflammation include infections, Lyme disease, and long COVID. Implants were first placed in 1962 in Houston, Texas.
I want to start off actually by you just identifying what exactly is breast implant illness? What is BII?
Sure. Yeah, thanks for having me on to discuss it. You know, we've spent better part of a decade looking at the problem. So breast implants started getting placed in our country in 1962, actually not too far from where I am right now. I'm in Austin, Texas, and Houston was the first place where implants were placed. By Cronin Giroux in '62. They were silicone elastomer shell implants with silicone filler. So fast forward now, we have highly cohesive silicone gel implants, we have saline-filled implants, they still have silicone elastomer shells. Now some patients we found over the course of time seemingly respond more to their implants, and there can be a variety of reasons Um, but the way I characterize what's called breast implant illness is it's a chronic inflammatory process of which, in this case, a breast implant is playing a role. It is not the only thing that leads to or causes chronic inflammation. Many patients have chronic inflammatory processes from infections, co-infections, Lyme disease. Uh, somebody who had COVID can have like long COVID symptoms. There's a lot of things that
