Encapsulation seems more likely with silicone gel implants

Hello,

I am not a big fan of silicone gel implants unless you have really thin tissue and are having problems with rippling. In my experience, the silicone gel implants have a very high encapsulation rate over the long term. In fact, my saline implant patients rarely develop capsular contracture. Some patients do prefer silicone because of the feel however.

To say you have a 1% risk of repeat contracture is "guilding the lilly" a bit. Most studies have shown repeat contracture (once you have developed contracture requiring surgery) can be quite common. Now hopefully any contracture you might develop afterward will be less than what you have right now. This should certainly be the case in the short term.

Do you smoke? Smoking can throw a monkey wrench into this. I would decrease or quit this before your surgery if you do.

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Once you have capsular contracture (cc), your chances of having the same is increased. Nationwide, the risk of a primary augmentation and cc is around 7-8% with saline. The new data from one of the implant company shows that their silicone implant CC rate is close to 9%.

This is nationwide, so look at these numbers with a grain of salt. So, silicone is not that dramatically higher as being stated in some of the comments here. You have to weigh the risks and benefits, but in redo surgery, in general, patients have a better cosmetic result with silicone implants as the breast tissue is generally thinned out, so you are more likely to feel the implants if they are saline, and definitely more likely to see the ripples. Massage, massage, and then more massage. Hope that helps.

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