41 years ago, Language and Literature teacher María A., 71, decided to undergo plastic surgery to increase the size of her breasts. At that time, she had just had three children and had separated from her husband. She wanted to feel good about her body again: “I did it for self-esteem,” she explains. Of course, she never told anyone.
“At that time, these things were not talked about, and I did not know anyone who had done it,” says María. It wasn't until a year ago, more than four decades later, that her children found out that her mother had breast prostheses. The only reason was that Maria had decided to take them off. She remembers that she never felt completely comfortable with her breasts, which prevented her from doing topless or showing off big cleavages: “I didn't think I had breasts to show.”
Your relationship with your breast prostheses over all these years has been complex and uncomfortable. A week after getting the implants, when she was 32 years old, they became encapsulated and she had to put them back in. These lasted until a year ago, when they did a mammogram in the summer and saw that the edges of it were very worn. At that moment, out of fear, he decided to take them off. The operation was done with his private insurance. He felt in the best hands, but the postoperative period, he says, was a nightmare. She now she is happy. “I don't miss them, I feel liberated,” she says.
“He boom Breast implantation came in the 90s, when fashion was marked by breasts with a lot of volume. Now we see many women in consultations from that generation who are removing them,” explains the specialist in plastic and reconstructive surgery at the César Casado Sánchez Peace Hospital. Some women who had breast implants in the 1980s are now having them removed due to the medical problems they can cause after so many years of wear and tear. “Many of them claim to feel liberated after having the procedure,” says Casado.
A study titled Removal of breast implants and simultaneous correction with an inferior dermoglandular flap. Mastopexy technique with autoprosthesis explains that “in recent years, plastic surgeons are frequently faced with patients who already have breast implants and who, either for aesthetic or reconstructive reasons, want or need to remove them. The literature shows that 88% of patients in whom implants are currently removed initially underwent implant placement surgery for purely aesthetic reasons and 12% for reconstructive reasons,” the report states.
“We will increasingly face this requirement from patients and an important surgical challenge due to the number of patients who have had breast implants placed many years ago and who, due to problems with them, with their own tissues or due to changes in body habits, they will request or need their removal, also demanding a good cosmetic result,” the report states.
In Spain, the most frequently performed plastic surgery is breast augmentation with an implant. During 2021, 204,510 aesthetic interventions were carried out, of which 52.6% were breast prostheses, according to the report The reality of cosmetic surgery in Spain, prepared by the Spanish Society of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (SECPRE).
For her part, the doctor Isabel de Benito, plastic surgeon and president of SECPRE, affirms that implants are not forever and that their average life is 15 years, although 7% of implants break before 10 years: “A patient who had surgery in the years 80 should be happy if they are being retired after 40 years. It is very important to constantly review yourself,” she clarifies.
De Benito agrees that the majority of patients who remove their implants feel great relief: “It's like taking a weight off their shoulders.” Even so, more than 80,000 women a year in Spain enter the operating room in search of breast augmentation. In a few years, perhaps they too will say enough is enough, as this first generation of women who entrusted a good part of their self-esteem to silicone has done.
Breast implants have evolved a lot over the years, but many myths have also been created around whether they are safe for women or not, which has caused many to remove them as a precaution. Casado explains in this regard: “The reality is that prostheses are an entity foreign to the body. They are not a bad thing, but they will never be beneficial for a woman either. “Always, before a surgery like this you have to think twice.”
In Spain, actresses and singers like Ana Obregón or Victoria Beckham became references in this type of surgery. It was Beckham herself who came to the fore in 2011 to tell the New Zealand Herald that he had removed them because, over the years, the appearance of those breasts had stopped convincing him. Later, in 2017 he published a letter to his 18-year-old self in the magazine Vogue where she asked herself not to have surgery and to celebrate her body. “Now these patients are older and don't want them, so when the time comes to have to remove the implants, they decide that they are not going to put them back in,” says Casado.
The doctor Marina García Moya He is a specialist in plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery and receives dozens of women in his office who come with examples that they have seen on social networks in search of feeling like those models. “I always tell them not to trust the photos because they don't know what those naked women look like and what they have had to go through. This is like in the hairdresser, not everything can be done for everyone,” she says.
“At that time they said that implants were forever, now they say it's time to remove them after a few years. Nobody ever explained it well to me,” says María. The Doctor Eugenio Lalinde CarrascoHe has been doing this type of operation since 1987, and he assures that “previously it was believed that they lasted a lifetime and now we know that they have to be changed every 10 or 15 years.”
In the case of Almudena O., 67 years old. She wore a prosthesis for 37 years, until last year. She made the decision to have surgery when she was young because she had a small breast and low self-esteem, and she believed that this could be a way to have more self-confidence.
Almudena confesses that he regretted having done it as an adult and that if he were 30 years old again, he would not operate knowing what he knows now. They created many problems for her all her life because his body was very thin and she felt the implants were very hard. Last year one of her prostheses broke and she had it removed at the public health facility because it could be dangerous for her health.
“I feel delighted. It has been a total liberation. “I am much more comfortable now, I feel like I am back to normal,” she says. The feeling of liberation of these two patients is what is repeated most in consultation, experts say.
Lalinde explains that in recent generations breasts have always had a very great importance because many women feel self-conscious if their chest is not as the beauty standards of the moment indicate: “The techniques, the shape of the prostheses, and now they are safer. However, there is something that has never changed: the interest in having a good cleavage”:
The specialist explains that the implants are very safe and that women who do well with the surgery are delighted, but different situations can occur for which they must be removed. The most common: a capsular contracture or rupture of the implant. Furthermore, over the years they have been associated with diseases such as Asia Syndrome, an autoimmune or inflammatory reaction, attributed to a substance foreign to the body, or anaplastic large cell lymphoma associated with breast implants.
Susana L., 67 years old, had a broken breast prosthesis and was scheduled for a consultation 10 months later at public health. At that point, she was told that she could only remove them, but not put them back on. “I had surgery in 1986 privately and they claimed that just as I had money to get them, now I also had to have them reconstructed,” she says.
Dr. Casado explains that public health only assumes this type of plastic surgery when it is restorative. “Public hospitals cannot assume the cost of this type of cosmetic operations. If you assume the price of putting them up, you also have to think about what their maintenance may cost,” he says.
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