A short excerpt of a YouTube conversation (host/patient + Robert Whitfield MD) about breast implant hardening. The anonymous speaker describes implants that were fine for years before becoming increasingly hard; Dr. Whitfield explains this as progressive scar (capsule) thickening — the body responding by 'walling off' the implant, likening tissue layers to magazine pages.
You had mentioned the capsule. And just as another sort of point of reference for people listening, one thing that happened to me was that they were fine for a couple of years and then one got hard. And then I thought, oh, maybe I hit a wall. So I had to check to see if it was ruptured. It was fine. Time had just passed and I thought, oh, I get them out or I'll replace them or I'll replace one. I don't know. And then the other one got hard. And that was after I was done racing completely. So I was like, oh, that's weird. So what does that mean when an implant gets a certain starts forms continuously more scar tissue?
Yeah, it can. It can vary depending on what the quality of the scar is like. And so I think of it, you know, just like pages of a magazine. You know, a super thin one is like one page or two pages thick, but as you're describing it, it's getting thicker and thicker and thicker. So I think of it as one, your body's responding to what's going on and it's trying to wall it off.
Right.
Get it out of your body. That's a way to view it. The other is the implants sometimes will create a response in the tissues that produces calcium like an eggshell. And that's where you'll.
