How often do modern gel breast implants rupture and what happens if they do?
A recent Mentor study on cohesive gel breast implants followed patients for two years and reported no ruptures during that time. A recent Swedish study of Inamed’s cohesive gel breast implants found a rupture rate of 1% at an average six years (5 to 9 years) (PRS 2007 December Supplement 1:77S, 79S). If you take a knife and slice a Mentor MemoryGel implant and try to squeeze the gel out, you can’t. The gel momentarily extrudes when it is squeezed, but then it retracts into its original shape, even though the implant envelope has been sliced. So even if an implant ruptures for some reason, like a strong traumatic blow, the gel won’t spill out into the body. Older breast implants had higher rupture rates and the gel would run, but the latest gel implants are more cohesive and much improved over the early ones.
