Implants: How Safe?

COMMON WISDOM

Women yearning to fill out their bikinis can safely enlarge their breasts if they stay away from controversial silicone-gel implants and choose saline (salt-water-filled) implants instead.

SECOND OPINION

Not necessarily. An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week reviewed new safety data on saline implants, which were approved by the FDA only two years ago. (Silicone-gel implants were never formally approved and are now available only in medical studies.) The review is timely. More than 200,000 women went under the knife last year to acquire bigger breasts. That's five times the number a decade ago. And 80,000 had implants after mastectomies. What could be worrisome about a sac of salt water? Plenty, according to the FDA hearings: more than 40% of women with saline implants return to the operating room because of pain, misshapen breasts or other complications. If the implants are removed, the skin may never be the same. Should a saline implant rupture, it deflates like a popped balloon, leaving a woman asymmetrical. Finally, all implants make mammograms more difficult to read.

BOTTOM LINE

Implants aren't a cure-all. And there's always the Wonderbra.

--By Janice M. Horowitz