ARGENTINA: Argentine woman has a ruptured PIP breast implant replaced after it broke a year and a half ago

Record ID: 446883

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Argentine woman has a ruptured PIP breast implant replaced after it broke a year and a half ago
  • Date: 29th January 2012
  • Summary: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (FILE - DECEMBER, 2011) (REUTERS) ROLON SHOWING THE CAMERA WHERE SHE WAS SUFFERING PAIN DUE TO THE INFLAMED GLANDS WHILE PARTICIPATING IN A MEETING OF WOMAN CARRYING PIP IMPLANTS WOMAN GATHERED AT A MEETING OF WOMEN AFFECTED BY PIP IMPLANTS
  • Embargoed: 13th February 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina, Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA4MZZZZLCMRMT663U5CTXFKUUQ
  • Story Text: An Argentine woman fitted with the controversial PIP breast implants said she was relieved to have had the devices, which sparked a global health scare when French inspectors ordered them off the market in 2010 due to quality concerns, replaced recently after one of them ruptured almost a year and a half ago.
    Gabriela Rolon went in for breast augmentation surgery in 2007 when she says her surgeon recommended the now barred Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) implants.
    Rolon says she was never satisfied with the implants and, just a few years after her operation, the right implant broke and the low-quality silicone filler used by PIP began spilling into her body.
    She complained of severe pain under her right arm and suffered the ill effects of the low-grade silicone for close to a year and a half before she finally was able to get the implants removed and replaced with safer inserts on January 13.
    The mother of four daughters told Reuters she was shocked when she saw the difference in quality between the PIP implants and the ones her doctor planned to replace them with.
    "[It was] completely different. When the doctor showed me what I had inside me, and what he was going to give me, no, I could not believe it [the difference]. [It was] this thick [showing thickness with her fingers referring to the outer covering of the new implant], I am not kidding, the thickness of the implants I have now. He went like this [as she slams her fist as if she is punching the implant], he hit it like a sledgehammer. 'This will never break,' he told me, 'this will last you forever, forget about it breaking.' And the truth is you can tell. I saw the PIP [implants], and the implants they gave me and you can tell the difference in quality between one and the other. It is crazy," Rolon said.
    After months of suffering, Rolon was finally admitted to the San Martin Eva Peron Hospital in the province of Buenos Aires where head plastic surgeon Hector Lanza removed both implants-- one broken and the other not-- and replaced them with higher quality devices.
    Though doctors could only limitedly examine Rolon due to the severity of the pain, Lanza said once he had her on the operating table he was astonished by the damage done.
    "Before we started the operation we could feel her and we came across some horrible glands in the under arm. If it were a different diagnosis, if we didn't know it [the implant] was broken, with these glands we would have thought it was something else. Because the glands were horrible and so we said, 'yes, it [the implant] was broken.' The implant was spilling and the glands were absorbing the silicone. So, yes, definitively we removed these immense glands. It had been years since I had removed a 5 centimetres wide gland," Lanza said.
    PIP enjoyed years of success with international sales, but behind the scenes, employees and the company's founder, Jean-Claude Mas, have admitted to hiding from certification agencies the fact they were using cheap, industrial silicone, not approved for medical use.
    "They said it was industrial silicone and that it wasn't good quality medical silicone. So, what you do know for sure is it wasn't a cohesive gel. And it was part industrial and low-quality medical silicone. Because, for example when we do [silicone] injections we use medical silicone and not industrial. Moreover, the outside of the implant that holds the gel, the implant's "skin" is very thin, it's very thin, it has a small layer. So, this can lead to it breaking. Of course it can result in this. The other thing was not having a cohesive gel; the silicone went to the glands, if it were a cohesive gel that would not have happened," Lanza told Reuters.
    Some 300,000 PIP implants were sold worldwide, thousands of them in Argentina where demand for cosmetic procedures is high.
    When the controversy began making headlines, Rolon joined a group of Argentine women seeking legal advice and approached Buenos Aires lawyer Virginia Luna.
    Unlike some governments, Argentina has not offered to pay for surgery to remove the implants and the French company that sold them has gone bankrupt, leaving the victims who gathered here with few options.
    Rolon however was lucky enough to be treated in a public hospital and was not charged for the removal of the PIP implants nor for the replacements given to her.
    She says none of the other women who trusted their medical practitioners should have to pay for replacements either.
    "First, please, I want all the ladies to get them removed, first and foremost, which is the first thing I did. That they have the same possibility that I did and remove them without paying a thing. They have already paid for this. They already paid for implants; they shouldn't have to pay again to get new ones. I think this cost should go to the doctor, if the doctor ordered this piece of shit, they have to take care of it," Rolon said.
    Health authorities in France and elsewhere have stressed that PIP's products carry no proven link to cancer, but surgeons report that they have abnormally high rupture rates.
    Mas faces charges of causing bodily harm in France, but will not be investigated for the graver charge of manslaughter, as was expected, but does now face criminal charges which carry longer sentences than those he faces in a fraud case expected to go to trial around October.
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