Breast Implant Rupture | How Do You Detect It?

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Table Of Content

· What Is a Breast Implant Rupture?

· What Does It Feel Like?

· What’s The Best Test To Find a Breast Implant Rupture?
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What Is a Breast Implant Rupture?

It’s a complication of breast implants where they, well, break.

Women can get implants either for breast augmentation or after breast cancer. In either case, after some years, there is some risk that your breast implants will wear out and “crack”.

It’s actually very common after 10 years. No implant is going to last forever.

There are two types of breast implant rupture: intracapsular and extracapsular. This drawing shows the differences:

• Intracapsular means the silicone is still inside the “capsule”, it’s contained.
• Extracapsular, on the other side, means silicone is spilling to other tissues around it.

Ruptures are intracapsular at the beginning. By that time, you won’t notice anything. You can only detect them if you get an ultrasound or MRI, but you won’t feel a thing.

Then, after some time, the rupture may spread outside. By then, you can have some symptoms because the silicone will cause irritation in other tissues.

As you can imagine, it’s better to detect ruptures when they haven’t broken the capsule yet. That way surgery is easier.

What Does A Breast Implant Rupture Feel Like?

First, you may not feel anything.

There are many women running around with ruptured implants who never know.

Then, the most common symptoms are:

• A lump: you may feel a soft lump on the your breast or by your armpit. That’s a chunk of silicone. Sometimes, it won’t be a lump but rather your breast will feel larger than the other side.
• Pain: the new lump causes inflammation, so you’ll feel pain. You may mistake it for a muscle pull. However, the pain usually comes and goes, unlike a muscle pull—which usually hurts all the time until it goes away.

If you feel a lump or pain, go to your doctor to get some tests.

So What’s The Best Test To Find a Breast Implant Rupture?

The best way to find a breast implant rupture is ultrasound or MRI.

· Ultrasound

Ultrasound is the easiest test to run and it can be done in the consultation room (if they have the US device).

Most of the time, it will show if there is a rupture, either inside or outside the capsule.

· MRI

MRI is the best way to find a rupture because it’s the most accurate.

This is how a rupture looks like on MRI:

The problem is that it’s usually harder to get a MRI appointment. Also, it takes around 20-30 minutes and you have to stay still inside the MRI-machine.

For that reason we sometimes keep MRI for unclear cases.

What Should You Do About It?

Once your doctor finds your implants are damaged, the best option is removing and replacing them (or not).

If you don’t have any pain you may be tempted to wait. The problem then is, if you wait too much, silicone can go outside the capsule and that’ll make it harder to remove them.

So, as a general rule: ruptured implant = remove.