Implants still pose serious risk

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Monday, April 18, 2005

Implants still pose serious risk

Editorials

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?

AID=/20050418/EDIT01/504180303/1020/EDIT

Investor confidence in Mentor Corp. soared after a federal health

advisory panel Wednesday recommended allowing the company to sell

silicone breast implants. But the amount of confidence women should

put in the decision is still a vastly confusing issue.

Would-be users could hardly be assured by Mentor's claim that the

device is " reasonably safe, " by the company's mere three years of

tracking implant recipients, or by a National Women's Health

Research official's claim that the recommendation is based

on " wishful thinking, " not data.

The implants have been banned since 1992 because of health concerns

and, as a Food and Drug Administration adviser acknowledged

Wednesday even after voting in favor of the device, implants

have " at best, a checkered past. "

That past - and questions that remain about implants' long-term

effects and shorter-term complications - should make the FDA wary of

returning the device to market.

But equally important is open debate on why women choose to have

implant surgery in the first place. While some women opt for it as

part of reconstructive surgery after breast cancer, others - even

very young women whose bodies are still developing - are willing to

take on known and unknown health risks for breast enlargement.

The issue carries a certain irony as women's groups focus attention

on breast cancer - cajoling women to pay attention to breast health

and reminding cancer survivors that the loss or disfigurement of a

breast is not the loss of their worth or identity.

At both an individual and societal level, female health should trump

all aspects of the implant debate.

But that has not been the history of implants. Thousands of damage

suits have been filed since the devices went on the market in the

1960s. Women charged implants ruptured, leaked into their breasts

and beyond, and led to rocklike scar tissue and multiple illnesses.

Implant producers won some cases and lost others.

Recent studies have largely failed to show connections to lupus or

cancer, but women's groups have argued that the device has never

been studied under the same strict requirements for other medical

devices.

Even beyond the long-term effects, what makes sale of the device so

questionable are the acknowledged short-term complications.

The FDA's 2004 " Breast Implant Consumer Handbook " warns women that

implants won't last a lifetime, have a high likelihood of rupture,

will likely require more surgery and may lead to " cosmetically

undesirable " changes in the breast.

Clearly, this surgery - increasingly passed off as little more than

a " makeover " - requires serious thought by the patient and grave

caution by the medical community. Last year, 327,000 women chose to

have implants, 86 percent for cosmetic enlargement. The FDA, and the

women themselves, should demand impeccable research results before

they try to decide how real benefits match up to real risks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AMEN.

www.BreastImplantAwareness.org