A breast implant is a medical prosthesis used to augment, reconstruct, or create the physical form of breasts. Applications include correcting the size, form, and feel of a woman’s breasts in post–mastectomy breast reconstruction; for correcting congenital defects and deformities of the chest wall; for aesthetic breast augmentation; and for creating breasts in the male-to-female transsexual patient.
There are three general types of breast implant device, defined by the filler material: saline, silicone, and composite. The saline implant has an elastomer silicone shell filled with sterile saline solution; the silicone implant has an elastomer silicone shell filled with viscous silicone gel; and the alternative composition implants featured miscellaneous fillers, such as soy oil, polypropylene string, et cetera. In surgical practice, for the reconstruction of a breast, the tissue expander device is a temporary breast prosthesis used to form and establish an implant pocket for the permanent breast implant. For the correction of male breast and chest-wall defects and deformities, the pectoral implant is the breast prosthesis used for the reconstruction and the aesthetic repair of a man’s chest. (See: gynecomastia and mastopexy)
Read more about Breast Implant: History, Types of Breast Implant Device, The Patient, Complications, Implants and Breast-feeding, Implants and Mammography, U.S. FDA Approval, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words breast and/or implant:
“If in the world there be more woe
Than I have in my heart,
Whereso it is, it doth come fro,
And in my breast there doth it grow,”
—Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)
“A cynic might conclude that the real purpose of the $500 million-a-year implant business is the implantation of fat in the bellies and rumps of underemployed plastic surgeons.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)