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