Ann-elizabeth,

I have one saline implant for four years and recently developed neuropathy. I am having it removed as soon as possible. It has progressed very fast and all of my medical tests have come back normal. I am praying this will start the healing process.
Srite back please.

I got a "nose job" back in January 2006. The surgeon put in my nose some implant i don't know what it is made of, i had never wondered.... up to now. My neuropathy symptoms started 5 months after the surgery. I don't really know what the material of the implant i got in my nose is, but i am sure i have an implant... I am wondering now guys, could this implant be related to an autimmune reaction??????? It had never crossed my mind, never, but now it seems possible, what do you think??

Monica,
I had knee replacements in March of '03 and developed the first symptoms of Sjogren's in May of '03 and neuropathy along with it. My thinking is that the surgery and all the inflammation kicked my autoimmune system into overdrive. But there is no real way to know. Have they tested you for all the autoimmune things that are in Liza Jane's list?

Billye

There is an entire history of the development of implants and their complications, as well as the litigation which followed. Baylor was a big center because it was their plastic surgeons who first contracted to find a biological use for silicone, and began putting them in implants. The first women they implanted, I understand, were from the medical community. In the end, they saw a huge number of cases of complications.

The most important thing to know is that silicone stimulates an immune response in lymph nodes, and migrates from the breast along the same routes as a breast cancer.

A good source of information: http://commandtrust.com/resources.html

I highly recommend Dr Feng for explant, as you already know. I don't know much about nose implants, except that the medicare studies I cited earlier on this thread found a correlation between ALL silicone implants and neuropathy.

Thank you for posting this information, LizaJane. I know there may be others here who have not suspected some sort of implant link to their health issues.

Valeri:

I am glad to see you posting here. There is good support here as well as good information, and even perhaps a little medical community bashing thrown in for good measure... We will try to keep that part light for the most part.

Monica:

Go back to your surgeon's records and ask for a copy of the operative report. If he/she is reluctant to give it to you, request it in writing. If it was done in a hospital, I found that it was easier sometimes to request it from their Medical Records department. You may have no problem at all. When I was running down medical records, people were not too excited about sharing my medical records, because of litigation...

This will help you find out what material was used, although I suspect that any implanted material could possibly stir up the immune system in at least some of us... The nature of the body is to "reject" that which is not natural. The sequence of physiological events resulting from this rejection is not well known.

I do not know how rhinoplasty implants are tracked, but in breast implants, they came in a box with a lot number and serial number on them-also the manufacture's name. Copies of this information were in the hospital medical records...

Cathie

LizaJane is correct in her description of the birth of implants having been in Houston. Houston did a booming business in implants, and probably still has a place at the front of the pack.

Interestingly enough, the woman who was the first to receive these, if my memory serves me correctly, kept her mouth shut about the health problems she developed after receiving them. I find this very irritating, because her unique position as the "first" and her subsequent health problems could have played a big role in having the medical establishment take our reports of our health issues seriously...

Prior to this, similar health complaints developed as a result of silicone injections done originally in Japan. I guess language translation must have been a barrier when these problems surfaced here, because doctor$, re$earcher$ and manufacturer$ don't seem to recognize the similarities when they translate from Japanese to English... (bashing for today)

Breast-implanted women are not the only ones reporting problems, however. There are reports of problems developing after other types of implants too...

And Billye, thank you so much for posting on this...

I will see if I can locate the link to this story and post it...
Cathie

Cathie

I am almost sure the implant is made of silicone. I googled "nasal implants are made of..." and silicone appeared in most articles. I want to have it removed anyways, even if it were done of another material. It is not that easy to contact the surgeon because he lives in another city, but i remember him as a nice person. Perhaps he just didn't know this could happen, or if he did, he thought the chances were minimal. So i don't think i will have any problems with him telling me what the implant is made of. I don't think there are any records because he performed the surgery in his office, but i am sure he knows what he put in me.

Regarding to the breast i am just remembering there was a girl in my class in collage that got breast implants. She had a chronich rash in her face, really bad. She has very light skin, and when she had flare ups, her face looked red. I don't know if this is connected, i just remembder it.

This is such an interesting thread because it bears out that whenever we introduce 'alien' things into our body, the problems that often develop, are huge! Same with root canals! Mercury dental fillings! Thimerasol in vaccinations?

Anyway! This thread leads me to ask would a silicone mouth occlusal splint possibly cause the same problem? Admittedly the mouth splint is only in at night -so maybe eight hours compared to a breast implant which is around the clock, is insignificant. Also the surface area of a splint is so much smaller than a breast implant but then it is directly in contact with saliva and thus gastric absorption. I know I was concerned about its potential toxic effects when I got it but the dentist reassured me it was benign!!!!!

However it gets one thinking, especially as three years later I developed PN.

Hi Megan:

Benign? I don't know about that. I was told implants were safe too, that they would last a lifetime and I would never have to worry about breast cancer. There are numerous implanted women who had saline filled implants and are now reporting similar illnesses. The outer shell is made of silicone.

If you could see my health history, you could pinpoint exactly when my issues began. It would probably make you think twice about using anything made of silicone in your body, or possibly anything at all foreign if you can avoid it.

I am now extremely sensitive to various foreign materials. The reactions I had to surgical staples and root canal material were NOT fun..

There are a lot of different areas of medicine using devices made of silicone or similar materials-not just breast implants. There are joint replacements, penile implants, testicular implants, implants used in various types of plastic surgery, silastic mesh (or similar) used in hernia surgeries, ligatures, ear tubes, chin implants to name a few...

In one of the hospitals here, my old ear doctor was not allowed to use silastic mesh in his ear surgeries... Gee, I wonder why... I mean if the hospital is concerned about this, that should be a big red flag...

There is a LOT of money involved here. Think about it...

Cathie

Ann-Elizabeth--I know you want to see some medical proof that implants can cause neuropathy, and you're just not going to find it. However, populations studies of people with any kind of silicone in their bodies show an excess number of neuropathy patients. If you want to know how this could happen, you might want to go to pubmed and search on "silicone AND immune response". From that I'm sure you'd find a lot of articles which are to the point.

The problem is, all the money was on the side of the manufacturers during the years leading to the litigation; since settlement, there's been no drive to study the products at all.

Monica: My guess is that your doctors will tell you that the silicone in your nose is more solid than that used in implants and that it should be fine. Except that's not a good enough explanation. The silicone degrades, and my guess is the nose implant isn't even in a capsule, so silicone is migrating from the implant into your lymphatic system, stimulating a response which cross reacts with nerves. I hope you can get this removed easily.

Valerie--when you have the implant removed, it's extremely important that it be removed correctly, and that the surgeon work with a radiologist who can check your lymph nodes, to make sure no silicone has leaked there. The one problem with removal is that there is usually leached silicone in the nodes. If you can't see it, that might mean there's very little; if you can, it's a good idea to have those nodes removed. But the sad part is that by the time we get the damn things out because of sickness, there is clearly some leakage or degradation. I highly recommend Dr Feng in Cleveland. I found her worth the trip out there, even alone and sick. Her radiologists scanned every node in my body, and she was able to microscopically remove all leaked silicone while preserving as much tissue as possible, and doing a nice reconstruction. If you look at the silicone support groups, you will see that there are several surgeons in the country who are recommended. I'd stick with the tried and true if I were you.

These two sites will link with most of the support sites. Myrl runs a listserv email group which updates us. Command Trust Network was in this from the start, in the 80s, and I relied on them for health information even before I became ill. After I was ill, I realized what a wonderful group they were, and how much data they had.

This first link is to an implant support group. If you search on "neuropathy", you will find many women there have neuropathy. I've posted and suggested some come here, but I don't know if any have. I was surprised to find that there were many, and that they really didn't have the medical information this site has.

http://www.breastimplantsupport.org/

These are links to two main implant sites which are rich in links.

http://www.webstarmagic.com/wisletter.htm
http://www.myrljeffcoat.com

Last, this group is for women with saline implants.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/SalineSupport/

It's nice to have more people posting here about this issue. It deserves attention.