Can Implants Become Infected Years After Surgery?

It is extremely rare for a breast implant to become infected years later. However, it is not impossible. You could have an infection in another part of your body and it could travel through your blood stream and cause an infection totally unrelated to the intial implant surgery. Sometimes you may never know the cause.
Fortunately, if this very rare event did occur, it is treatable.

Breast implants can definitely become infected years after surgery. Because implants are a foreign material, distinct from your body's own tissues, your body is able to deliver antibodies or antibiotics around the surface of the implant, but not into the implant itself. If you get an infection elsewhere in your body, and the bacteria gets into your bloodstream, it can seed the implant. In milder cases, this can result in capsular contracture (significant scar tissue buildup around the implant thought to be a sub-acute infection), or in more severe cases, this can result in a true infection. If the infection is too advanced, your body has little ability to fight it, even with aggressive antibiotics, as the antibiotics can't be delivered into the implant itself.
For this reason, many of us recommend that our patients get on antibiotics if they have any bacterial infection, or if they have any procedure that could result in bacterial seeding into the blood (such as dental procedures or elective surgery).
Hope this helps. Best of luck.

I have had 2 or three cases where the patient had perfectly natural and aesthetic results but after years, spontaneously get infected. To be fair, this is in perhaps a couple of thousand or more implants. One woman had a dental abcess. The other one may have been due to breast feeding/masitis.
It is VERY reare, and I am not sure it can be prevented.
sek

Yes. They can.
Although this is not a common occurrence, it is not unheard of. In theory, any presence of bacteria or fungus in your blood (IE bacteremia - as seen with blood poisoning [sepsis], severe mouth or urinary tract infection etc) can literally seed an implant.
We have known for years that people with irregular or noisy heart valves (those having murmurs) or those with artificial valves are at a higher risk of getting them infected with bacteria from elsewhere (known as bacterial endocarditis). Similar issues can be seen with artificial vascular conduits, knee and hip joints etc.
In the case of breast implants, it is not unheard of for breast implants to become hard (capsular contracture) years later, a few weeks after an infection. Rarer yet, we have all seen a few cases of implant infections as verified by positive cultures of the implant obtained at the time of their removal.
Personally, with breast implants in, whenever you have an infection or have your teeth cleaned, I would recommend you consider taking antibiotics to lower such risks.
I hope this was helpful.

Infections can develop in implants years after the procedure. But, I would have to say this is very rare.  Unfortunately there really is not anything you can do to completely prevent this from happening.