The hidden threat of silicone charms
Ella Bikmurzina, "Around the World"
Modern women, in their desire to keep up with the ideals of beauty, rush from one extreme to the other. Some go on severe diets and, following the latest trends of fashion, achieve painful thinness. Others crave magnificent forms and, having adopted the examples of Hollywood beauties, go under the knife of a plastic surgeon, not even suspecting the inevitability of new operations to which they condemn themselves. Today, silicone body parts will not surprise anyone, every year the number of people who want to add to the volume due to silicone is only increasing, and this is despite the fact that researchers continue to find new flaws in such implants.
The first silicone implants appeared in the 1960s. However, attempts to correct imperfect forms of nature have taken place before. Breast augmentation was attempted with the help of patients' adipose tissue taken from the hip area, with the help of paraffin, ivalon, polystan, etheron and other materials, but these experiments cannot be called successful. The idea to use silicone breast prostheses came to American plastic surgeons Frank Gerow and Thomas Cronin. Since 1962, they began to try silicone endoprostheses on patients, which became more and more every year. Fifteen years after the invention of the silicone solution to the problem of imperfect forms, accusations rained down on Dow Corning, a prosthetics company. The first court case was won by a patient from Cleveland, who demanded compensation for the suffering she suffered caused by the rupture of the implant and subsequent operations. The torment of the victim of the beauty industry was estimated at $170 thousand, but the court case was not widely publicized.
In the 1980s, doctors, concerned about the increasing difficulties in the treatment of diseases caused by foreign objects in the body, began to express concerns that silicone implants could provoke the development of breast cancer and autoimmune diseases, which are based on the immune response directed against their own organs or tissues of the body. In 1991, the patient Marian Hopkins received compensation of $ 7.3 million – she suffered from a systemic connective tissue disease caused by a rupture of a silicone implant. By December 1991, 137 lawsuits had already been filed against Dow Corning. The current situation forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to assemble a commission and resolve the issue of silicone implants. The commission included plastic surgeons, oncologists, immunologists, radiologists, gynecologists. Despite the fact that the link between the development of cancer or autoimmune diseases and silicone implants has not been established, in February 1992, the FDA recommended limiting the further use of silicone implants exclusively to reconstructive surgery, and including all patients in a study aimed at establishing the risk of autoimmune diseases. This decision seems illogical: if silicone implants are still suspected of the ability to provoke the development of tumors, why allow the use of such prostheses to restore the breast after cancer treatment?
After the unmotivated implantation of liquid silicone was banned by American law in 1992, the so-called "silicone parties" began to gain popularity in the United States. They especially attracted the attention of transvestites who came there to receive a subcutaneous injection of liquid silicone – not always medical. Illegal silicone injections were in great demand, because they are much cheaper than the services of plastic surgeons. However, often such parties ended very sadly. As a result of accidental entry into a vein, silicone entered the bloodstream, which inevitably led to death. In addition, silicone injected into the body by subcutaneous injection can cause an allergic reaction, "slide" lower, lead to disorders of the immune system, cause multiple swelling and back pain.
I remember the monologue of the transvestite Agrado – one of the heroines of the film "All about my mother" by the Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar Caballero. During an unexpectedly interrupted performance, she goes on stage and, in order to entertain the audience, tells about her difficult life – about those endless operations that she had to undergo, and the kilograms of silicone that had to be pumped to become a woman.
The ban on the use of silicone implants in the United States had to be lifted in 2006. But this does not mean that implants are unconditionally justified. Scientists continue to research in this area.
Fillers
Silicone breast implants have not undergone fundamental changes since their invention. The prosthesis is a durable silicone shell with a filler. Modern breast augmentation implants are filled with silicone gel, physiological (saline) solution or CMC (carboxymethyl cellulose). The undoubted advantage of silicone is that it imitates a real female breast well. The viscous and sticky substance inside the endoprosthesis does not leak out when the shell breaks. Ideally, a foreign substance should not enter the body, but it is difficult to guarantee this.
Implants filled with saline are safer from a medical point of view. However, they do not have the softness and "shape memory" of silicone implants and therefore sometimes wrinkle and shift. But their installation takes a minimum of time and does not require large incisions. Owners of such prostheses are always warned about the extremely rare, but still probable possibility of losing a bust: if an implant filled with fluid breaks, wears out or a valve fails, salt water will leak out, painlessly absorbed by tissues, but the breast will become flat.
The filler of the latest generation is hydrogel from CMC. Like silicone, it perfectly adapts to the natural body temperature, so such prostheses are even more difficult to distinguish from natural female breasts. At the same time, a hydrogel prosthesis is as safe as an implant filled with saline. If its shell breaks, the gel will quickly disintegrate in the body to simple components – glucose, carbon dioxide and water.
Medicine does not stand still, a new generation of implants – "titanium" - are already undergoing clinical trials. Such prostheses are filled with the same silicone, but its outer shell is covered with the thinnest layer of titanium, an almost "eternal" metal used in space technology. Titanium was chosen for such delicate purposes for its unique property – absolute inertia in the human body. A titanium implant, unlike a traditional silicone one, does not cause inflammation, allergies or rejection reactions; no scar or capsule forms around it.
Japanese experts propose a fundamentally new method of breast augmentation – to transplant fat cells from a woman's abdomen or thighs mixed with stem cells into breast tissue. A woman's own cells will not be rejected. In addition, many will be attracted by the opportunity to get rid of several kilograms of fat where it is not needed.
Silicone legs, buttocks, ears, lips, nose...
When it comes to silicone prostheses, women's breasts are most often meant. However, with the help of silicone, you can "pump up" other parts of the body. Increasing the volume of the buttocks with implants is called gluteoplasty. Such prosthetics are similar to breast prosthetics, but special attention is paid to the strength of the implant. The main and only prohibition after buttock surgery is injections. After the installation of buttock prostheses, injections can be made only in the thigh area.
The first report on the correction of deformities of the lower legs using silicone implants appeared in 1979, plastic surgeon Glitzenstein (J. S. Glitzenstein) shared his successful experience. Immediately after him, three other surgeons from Canada, the USA and Germany published the results of their work related to shin augmentation. Prosthetics of the lower legs and calf muscles can correct a number of defects: thin legs, disharmonious with the body; changes associated with loss of volume of the medial part or loss of volume of the inner surface of the lower leg (arched legs); hallux valgus (diverging legs); asymmetrical legs.
It is not only women who increase breast volume. Pectoral augmentation is a method of increasing the visible volume of the large pectoral muscles of men. If it is not possible to pump up the pectoral muscles in a natural way, plastic surgeons will help to correct this "misunderstanding". From the "female" version, this operation differs only in the size of the implants. Among the likely complications, doctors name displacement of the breast implant, infections, hematomas, seromas (accumulation of tissue fluid around the implant) and impaired sensitivity.
Silicone implants are widely used for contouring in maxillofacial surgery. Such operations are mainly resorted to for post-traumatic and congenital defects. Most often, implants are used for contouring of the nose, lower jaw, cheekbones, cheeks. Silicone ears have made 47-year-old Janet Craven from Wakefield happy, born with a rare disease – Treacher-Collins syndrome (congenital facial defect). At the end of October 2001, the woman had three holes made to the right and left of her face, special magnetic chips were transplanted into them, to which silicone ears were then attached.
Nevertheless, the number of breast augmentation operations with prostheses cannot be compared with the number of operations where the use of silicone implants is motivated. That is why doctors pay so much attention to the problems of silicone bust. The picture shows the American actress and model Maxi Mounds, who entered the Guinness Book of Records as the owner of the largest breast implants. Her prostheses are made of polypropylene, and each breast weighs a little less than ten kilograms. Photo (Creative Commons license): Maxi Mounds via Beau Wade.
Is it beautiful with a health risk?
A curious pattern was discovered by researchers at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Having studied the stories of more than three and a half thousand Swedish women who enlarged their breasts in the period from 1965 to 1993, they found out that the number of suicides among them is three times higher than the global average. The data were published in the "Bulletin of Plastic Surgery" (Annals of Plastic Surgery). Women who underwent breast plastic surgery fell into the risk category for another indicator: they are three times more likely to die from drug and alcohol abuse. However, Loren Lipworth, who led a group of researchers, believes that the reason for suicide is not in the implants themselves, but in the fact that women who decide on plastic surgery often have psychological problems. First of all, this is low self-esteem, which they want to get rid of through improving their appearance. The authors of the report found no link between breast plastic surgery and the risk of developing cancers, including breast cancer. As it turned out, women who have inserted silicone implants are more likely to die from lung cancer and respiratory diseases, such as emphysema of the lungs, than from breast cancer. Experts attribute the increased risk of lung cancer to the fact that patients with breast surgery often smoke a lot.
Danish scientists led by Søren Friis came to similar conclusions. For thirty years, they observed women after the introduction of silicone implants. The study involved two thousand eight hundred Danish women who underwent breast augmentation surgery between 1973 and 1995, as well as one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six women who did not undergo surgery. It turned out that women with silicone breasts developed breast cancer 30% less often than women from the control group. The reason for this pattern is not yet clear, but the authors of the study suggest that the main role is played by the characteristics of women who resort to such an operation. Previous studies conducted by Danish scientists have shown that thin women or women who have had several pregnancies are more likely to agree to breast implant surgery – factors that contribute to reducing the risk of breast cancer.
However, breast augmentation with breast prostheses can make it difficult to diagnose cancer early on X-rays. This conclusion was reached by experts from the organization "Group Health Co-operative" in Seattle under the leadership of Diana Miglioretti (Diana Miglioretti).
Austrian scientists have reported observing an unusual effect – the appearance of previously unknown proteins on the surface of silicone breast implants shortly after the implants are placed in the body. Georg Wick and his colleagues suggest that these proteins are the result of the body's immune response to implanted silicone. The study examined proteins found on the implants of twenty-three healthy women who performed these operations for cosmetic purposes. In addition to the unknown, the presence of thirty proteins, which are common for the immune response, was revealed. Researchers do not claim that there is a direct connection between autoimmune diseases and silicone implantation, however, they suggest that silicone promotes the adhesion of ordinary proteins, which can then trigger an autoimmune reaction of the body's immune system.
There is another point that rarely anyone thinks about when deciding on an operation. Implants have a limited service life, about 10 years. This means that patients who have undergone surgery will have to repeatedly resort to the services of plastic surgeons – to remove failed or old implants, put new ones or solve other problems that arise. All this entails additional monetary expenses and, of course, affects the general state of health in a certain way.
There are cases when prosthetics are necessary, but more often cosmetic surgeons turn to the services for a whim. The documentary about silicone implants "Absolutely Safe" shows what surgeons usually do not tell their patients about – what disastrous consequences their whim can lead to. It's time to remember that you can't buy health, you can only pay with it. Including the thoughtless pursuit of illusory ideals of beauty.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru13.02.2008