Without breasts, there is paradise: when removing breast implants returns life

Michelle Solórzano could barely move; something in her body was slowly killing her and although she was clear that they were the breast prostheses implanted more than 15 years ago, the doctors attributed it to the work stressliver problems, allergies, or they directly told him to come back another day, that it was not so serious.

This 33-year-old Venezuelan had torn skin, oozing sores on her legs and arms that made her spend days in the emergency room. One of her prostheses was excreting a yellow liquid that “evidently indicated an infection”his hair was falling out, and depression would not let him get out of bed.

He went from doctor to doctor, with partial diagnoses and began to investigate on his own “On the disease of implants”.

“I felt that it was associated with the implants because my chest hurt a lot, I was immobile for 20 or 25 days, I was in a wheelchair because I couldn’t move my right side“, said.

The “Asian Syndrome”

That “implant disease” This is how Asia Syndrome is known, an autoimmune disease that began to be heard about a few years ago due to the “boom” of the breast augmentation that took place in the 1990s and 2000s, and which still makes it, together with liposuction, the most requested cosmetic surgery in Colombia.

While the doctors did not want to believe Michelle because, she says, she was still “He demonizes the Asia Syndrome a lot; obviously they want to continue putting prostheses”she was watching how it went off.

Until she came to Dr. Alan González, one of the doctors who have stood up to the lack of security offered by implants and who finally performed the removal procedure.

“They have always taught us that prostheses were safe, that if the silicone was medical then there would never be any problem, but it turns out that for a few years now one has started to encounter diseases in breast implants: giant cell lymphomas, Syndrome from Asia…”it states.

To the doctor, who wants every procedure done in his clinics to have “predictable results”, began to cause him concerns. And more and more patients came to him with symptoms, especially after the pandemic, such as fatigue, migraines, memory disturbances, muscle pain, insomnia, panic attacks… Symptoms that almost completely disappear when the implants are removed.

die alive

“I spent six months dying in life”recalls Solórzano, who has now been without the prosthesis for five months and all the symptoms she had have decreased by 95%, according to her own calculations: “I barely opened my eyes from the anesthesia, it was wonderful because the chronic pain was gone.”

“The only thing I have now is this little sleeping finger”, he says pointing to his right hand, and gradually recovering his hair. She has also stopped crying.

At first, she was afraid of having the explantation because she didn’t want to see the 17-year-old girl they called in the mirror again. “pigeon chest” at school, which led her, like all her classmates, to ask for a breast implant as a gift.

But after the two operations – the one to remove the implants and the one to reconstruct the breasts – she looked at herself and cried with happiness: she seemed safe with her body.

Solórzano does not want “demonize” prostheses or criticize those who decide to put them on, but for her “it is not worth deteriorating your health for a super zero beauty standard”. There are less invasive aesthetic surgeries and above all -he indicates- what is important is the “self-love”.

Despite the fact that more and more women decide to have their prostheses explanted, either due to a change in beauty standards or for a health issue, breast operations are still far superior.

In 2021, more than 43,700 breast augmentation surgeries were performed, while there were about 10,700 explantations, according to the Colombian Society of Plastic Surgery.

In addition, removing implants can be up to two or three times more expensive than putting them in. Colombia in this field continues to be the country where more patients come to have procedures from abroad, and it is the second where more are performed, as pointed out by the president of the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Lina Triana.

Before any procedure, Triana recommends that they be performed by qualified doctors, with at least several years of experience, who are registered with the Ministry of Health or have a professional plastic surgery card and in centers with international standards.

The canons of beauty have changed slightly and now there are “an evolution towards proportionality, towards the harmony of forms”points out Dr. González, but in the end, concludes Solórzano, “Society is still very cruel to women.”

Source: EFE