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:
“his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“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)