Breast Explant with Capsulectomy in Mexico City

there are three things we prefer you know beforehand. First: an explant is not just removing the implants. We must plan how your breast will look, and in many cases it ends up noticeably smaller and with lax skin, which is why a lift or a second stage is often needed. Second: en bloc capsulectomy is not always the best option. When there is no cellular atypia or oncologic indication, it has no demonstrated benefit and does involve a more extensive surgery, with higher risk of bleeding, pneumothorax and injury to chest structures. If your capsule is adherent to rib or pleura, insisting on removing it entirely can be more dangerous than leaving a fragment, and in that case we will tell you. The third is about the systemic symptoms many patients report, and we prefer to tell you what we know and what we do not.

What we know: in published studies, including the largest prospective follow-up to date, patients report a significant decrease in their symptoms and improvement across all quality-of-life domains after having their implants removed.

What we do not know: why. Causality has not been demonstrated, not every patient achieves complete resolution, and in the most recent systematic review, with 2,280 patients, improvement in this group was moderate and frequently partial. By contrast, when there is an objective finding such as a granuloma or a rupture with consequences, improvement was significant. That same body of evidence also did not find that the type of capsulectomy influenced symptom recovery.

And there is something else we prefer to tell you beforehand, even if it is uncomfortable: not all the symptoms you have are necessarily attributable to your implants. Fatigue, joint pain, difficulty concentrating and sleep problems are common symptoms in the general population and have many possible causes: thyroid disease, anemia, deficiencies, rheumatologic conditions, sleep apnea, among others. Having implants does not automatically mean the implants are the cause. That is why there are women who have their implants removed and do not achieve the improvement they expected. Not because their symptoms were not real, but because their origin lay elsewhere and remained untreated.

We also know something that applies to any chronic symptom and to any person: pain, fatigue, sleep and stress all influence one another. That does not mean anything is imaginary, it means that is how the body works. Leaving that part out would mean not addressing something that also has treatment.

Your symptoms are real and we take them seriously. Precisely because they are real, we carry out a complete workup before operating: we look for local causes and also for other medical conditions that produce this same picture and that have their own treatment. We do not do it to question you, we do it so that, whether you choose surgery or not, you leave here with answers. If we find another cause, you will have gained far more than a surgery. And if you decide to have your implants removed, we will do it knowing what the evidence supports and what it does not, without promising you a result no one can guarantee.