Breast Plastic Surgery - Systemic Illness and Disease

Since the early 1990s, a number of independent systemic comprehensive reviews have examined studies concerning links between silicone gel breast implants and systemic diseases. The consensus of these reviews is that there is no clear evidence of a causal link between the implantation of silicone breast implants in breast plastic surgery and systemic disease.

Thousands of women claim that they have become ill from their implants. Complaints include neurological and rheumatological problems. Some studies have suggested that subjective and objective symptoms of women with implants may improve when their implants are removed.

As studies have followed women with implants for a longer period of time, more data has become available on systemic diseases as well as autoimmune symptoms. Several large studies from the national health registry in Denmark found implant recipients no more likely to be diagnosed with an increased incidence of classic auto-immune symptoms as compared to women of the same age in the general population, and that musculoskeletal symptoms were generally lower among women with implants  after breast plastic surgery compared with women with other cosmetic surgery and women in the general population. Recent longitudinal follow-up of these patients has confirmed previously reported findings.

Several studies have established that women who elect to undergo breast augmentation or other plastic surgery tend to be healthier and more affluent than the general population, prior to breast plastic surgery and afterwards. For example, two large studies of plastic surgery patients found a decreased standardized mortality ratio in both breast implant and other plastic surgery patients, but an increased risk of respiratory cancer deaths in breast implant recipients compared to other forms of plastic surgery. Smoking was statistically controlled in one study and not in the other, but the authors speculated that there could potentially be differences in smoking that might contribute to the higher lung cancer deaths among women with implants. Another large study with long-term follow-up of nearly 25,000 Canadian women with implants reported, "Findings suggest that breast implants do not directly increase mortality in women."

In 2001 a study suggested an increase in fibromyalgia among women with extracapsular silicone gel leakage, compared to women whose implants were not broken or leaking outside the capsule.This association has not repeated in a number of related studies, and the US-FDA concluded "the weight of the epidemiological evidence published in the literature does not support an association between fibromyalgia and breast implants."

While there is a general international consensus that silicone implants in breast plastic surgery have not been shown to cause systemic illness, excluding the possibility that a small group of patients may become ill through (as yet) unknown mechanisms may prove difficult. As the US-FDA notes "researchers must study a large group of women without breast implants who are of similar age, health, and social status and who are followed for a long time (such as 10-20 years) before a relationship between breast implants and these diseases can conclusively be made."