There is a common complication these days called capsular contracture which happens after you get breast implant surgery.
What is it?
Let’s start with discussing what a capsule is. So when any surgery is done, if any sort of injury happens to an individual- your body is the one in charge of healing it. So in healing, there is a little scarring and scar tissue appears. So this capsule is a part of the normal healing process in the body.
When we put in an implant, Dr Salil Patil explains, “It is inert, it doesn’t cause any sort of reaction in our body. But still, when healing happens, there is an outer covering that forms over the implants. So that covering is called a capsule. This is normal. Every person, after they suffer an injury or have an implant, it is necessary that this capsule forms them.”
Problem Arises
In some people, the capsule becomes really thick and then it starts getting tighter in our body and due to that a certain amount of pain starts in us. This tightness and pain are what is referred to as capsular contraction.
Precautions
In most people, this can be controlled by using really simple, normal precautions. If it is very severe though, then we will have to think about it further. So how should we avoid it?
- How is your lifestyle? Smoking needs to stop completely to lessen the chances of capsular contraction. Smoking causes difficulty in healing, i.e. it takes more time to heal. Smoking also leads to bleeding and this bleeding leads to complications.
- If you use a really large implant then the chances of contracture increase significantly. Some people want really big chests and after you put in those implants, your skin stretches far more and so the chances of contracture increase significantly. And so you’ll have to deal with that later on.
- Depends on what implants you are using. The textured implants make it so that capsular contractures are less as compared to smoother implants. This is a little debatable and there are no such practical shreds of evidence that I can give you but this is as per my observations so prefer a textured implant.
- What position do you keep your implant in? Are you keeping it under your muscle? Are you keeping it under your gland and the muscle or the fascia? This matters when your breast size is really small. So, in these cases if you keep it under your muscle or your fascia.
- Finally, before putting the implants inside the breast, it must be handled as less as possible. You get the implant from the packaging and you put it inside the breast so minimal handling. What happens in this is that, the contamination chances are reduced and so the infection chances are also reduced. Because of that a bio-film, a film layer forms on the implant doesn’t happen. And if it doesn’t happen then the chances are reduced.
- Post-surgery, do a little massage and keep moving the implants. If you keep doing this then the chances of you not having contracture become better.
Treatment
Even after doing all this, if you still get contracture then don’t worry it is treatable. Dr Salil assures you that there is a solution. In the initial stages, moving the implants and massaging them in a circular motion and ultrasound treatment all of this helps a lot, so chest muscle treatment and these motion activities help a lot.
in very severe cases, the implant has to be taken out and the capsule that is contracted or has become tighter that too has to be taken out.
Then you take a few months break and then you can again go for the implants.