Ted Eisenberg, DO | Philadelphia, PA | moc.larutangnikool@ofni
Earlier in my career as a plastic surgeon specializing in cosmetic breast surgery, I reported about a 4% chance of saline implant deflation. Now, the rate has fallen dramatically to less than 2%. What’s changed? Since 2011, I’ve been overfilling Mentor round smooth saline breast implants 10-13% beyond the manufacturer’s recommended fill volume.
I recently completed a 16-year retrospective comparative study of patients whose breast implants were filled within and beyond the manufacturer’s recommended fill volume. The saline breast implants that were not overfilled had a deflation rate at 8 years of 4.02%, while those that were overfilled had a statistically significant deflation rate at 8 years of 1.83% (p < 0.00001). Overfilling cut down on fold failure of the implant shell, which is the most common cause of deflation.
The results of my research were published in March 2021 in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, an international journal. The article, “Does Overfilling Smooth Inflatable Saline-filled Breast Implants Decrease the Deflation Rate? Experience with 4761 Augmentation Mammaplasty Patients,” presents the largest sampling of patient deflation data to date.
To read the article, which is available as Open Access, visit: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-021-02198-3