THERE'S NOTHING SEXY ABOUT CANCER

Minggu, 29 Januari 2012

THERE'S NOTHING SEXY ABOUT CANCER

THERE'S NOTHING SEXY ABOUT CANCERBy The Hoopla. With Dr Rhian Parker

January 25, 2012

Spare a thought today for Australian women who have breast implants.

They're worried that the procedure their doctor told them was "normal, everyday and low risk" has turned out to be anything but.

They fear they may get cancer.

Why? Because it turns out their implants might be filled with the Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) brand which have been found to contain industrial-grade silicone.

"Industrial". A far cry from"beautiful”or "erotic”.There's nothing sexy about cancer.

The women who have had reconstructive procedures after breast cancer surgery must be feeling especially alarmed. After the roller coaster of diagnosis and survival, they are no longer on safe ground.

How many women in Australia have implants? See, that's the thing. No-one knows.

Here in Australia in 1996 (that's 16 years ago!) the Australian Comprehensive Medicine Association ( now known as the Australasian Integrative Medicine Association … not to be confused with the well known, AMA) held a conference in Sydney on "Implants and Human Health".

It concluded:

*That the refusal of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons to participate was to be deplored and condemned.

*That there should be a National register of plastic surgeons which detailed their training and accreditation – with provision for peer review.

*That all stakeholders – manufacturers, doctors and consumers – be informed about the need to promote the highest standards of care and continuing education for all plastic and aesthetic surgeons.

*That the establishment of an appropriate independent body to create and develop such standards, and ensure their adoption, was of highest priority.

Their Number One recommendation?

*Establish a national registry of women who receive implants so that problems arising from implants could be traced to the women who received them.

None of these resolutions found favour.

It’s only now that the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons is preparing to record every breast implant patient, their surgeon and the type of operation conducted.

Taking credit for one of the first registrys in the world?

When they could have done it almost two decades ago?

Give us a break! We didn’t come down in the last D-cup.

We are now 30 years too late to be having this discussion when someone you know is suffering.

Over to Dr. Rhian Parker who writes this, as commissioned for readers of The Hoopla:

Breast Implants: What are the Risks?

Anecdotally getting breast implants seems to be very popular among Australian women. We don't really know how many women get implants, because there is currently no register for recording this information. We have a rough idea of how many implants we import but that's about it. The recent publicity about the PIP (Poly Implant Prosthèse) breast implants has re-ignited the debate about how safe implants are and what the other risks associated with breast implants might be.

Are silicone implants safe?

It is a bit surreal for those of us who remember the law suits that were brought against the Dow Corning in the 1980s and 1990s when around 400,000 women worldwide were involved in class actions about silicone breast implants produced by that company.

Claims linked the implants to breast cancer, auto-immune diseases and neurological problems. The problems said to be associated with silicone implants led to protracted legal proceedings in a number of countries and the filing for bankruptcy by Dow Corning.

In 1999 the Institute of Medicine (Institute of Medicine Committee on the Safety of Silicone Breast Implants, 1999) reported that they could find no evidence that silicone breast implants were associated with any disease. However, the report did note that there was a high incidence of more localised complications which included implant rupture, infection and silicone leaking through the nipple or skin.

Significantly, the report noted that there was a concern that women who had silicone breast implants had not been informed about potential risks associated with those implants and that risk of local complications were understated. One woman who had implants said:

…they started going hard and misshapen, there was a number of operations but there was no way they were going to get any better. I couldn’t lie face down. It was too painful to lie on them. I decided to have them removed…. (from Women, Doctors and Cosmetic Surgery: Negotiating the 'Normal' Body, Rhian Parker, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

Here we are 13 years later with a similar controversy but with a different company producing the implants. So what is in these implants that may cause problems?

Source: http://id.she.yahoo.com/new/http://thehoopla.com.au/breat-implants//

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