Silicone gel implants are those devices that are becoming ever more popular in breast enlargement though the industry of cosmetic surgery is now seeing an increasing move towards the use of a patient’s own fatty tissue instead. Breast implants are a very old concept and have been used since the 1900s with the start of the movement beginning with the use of a patient’s own fatty tissue to injecting all sorts of toxins and even injecting silicone. All of these methods are considered archaic now since the creation of implants in the form that they exist in today.
Saline implants were the most popular form of implants that were used in the later part of the 19th century. Saline implants are still used even today. These are actually quite ingenious in their simplicity. A surgery is performed with an incision at the bottom of the breast, on the areola, armpits, or abdomen. The implant is then placed above the fascia, or under the fascia but above the muscle, or under the muscle. A saline implant is empty when it is inserted and this is crucial in limiting scarring. After the implant is inserted, it is filled up with saline. The advantage of this method is that adjustments can be made to the size of the breast and if the implant did ever rupture, the liquid is saline and not toxic in anyway. However, the downside of these implants lies in the fact that it could inappropriately deflate at any point of time. This along with more calls for a more realistic feel caused the use of saline implants with a silicone interior. On another front, silicone started to be used in the 1970s as a possible method of enlargement. The first ones were easily ruptured and cost the company dearly in lawsuits because of failure and leakage of silicone into surrounding tissue. This caused a condition called capsular contracture – an immune reaction that results in the breast turning fibrous and hard. Subsequent releases improved upon the design to ensure more stability and some even used polyurethane but were withdrawn because of a lack of government approval and some concerns of cancer risk.
Today that material that is used for implants is so stable that they can actually last a lifetime, or at least until they are removed because most implants have a good chance of failure. This is also a point to note that many patients that do indulge in breast augmentation will remove implants after their first round of problems with the implants.