Here is an update from Carol Ciancutti-Leyva, Author of the documentary “Absolutely Safe.” This was published in Alive Mind Woman on September 18, 2008.

In 1995, I went to Washington, DC to film a rally on the Washington mall. Women and their families and friends from all over the country had convened to protest the lack of safety information the government was requiring manufacturers of breast implants to provide. I walked around in the crowd and interviewed woman after woman who told me the same basic story about their failed implants. Maybe slightly different symptoms, some had implants ruptured, some had great pain but virtually all of them believed they were sick from their implants and all believed the device had failed them. This crowd was asking the government to force breast implant manufacturers do to more and better research. This is the first step I took in making my film, ABSOLUTELY SAFE.

Fast forward 13 years and what has changed. Not much EXCEPT both saline and silicone implants were approved by the FDA based on two to three years of safety data. The FDA approval was given despite the fact that long term safety is an important concern for women getting implants. Breast augmentation is more popular than ever. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons breast augmentation was the #1 most performed surgical procedure in the US in 2007. They also state that “despite domestic concerns like inflation and the home lending crisis, average American continue to spend money on plastic surgery.” ASPS state there was a 7% increase in procedures from 2006 to 2007.

For breast cancer patients who are recommended to have mastectomies, the recommended reconstruction of the breast is with silicone implants. Also, now women with the breast cancer gene are recommended to have radical mastectomies and have silicone implants put in.

I started my film, ABSOLUTELY SAFE, many years ago to give voice to the women who believed their health had been harmed by breast implants. My Mother was (and is) one of them. The question remains has the public or the medical community truly heard these voices? Have other women contemplating this surgery heard these voices? Are women getting Informed Consent? Do they still want implants even if they understand the possible health risks and the unknowns of breast implants safety? I don’t have the definitive answers and I have never set out to prove implants harmful. I set out to give a certain group of women a voice.

Informed consent is defined as:

A medical doctrine based on the notion that every patient has a right to decide what’s going to be done to his or her body. It requires doctors to inform patients of all the risks and benefits connected with an operation or procedure. Patient must not only be informed of such risks, they must also fully understand them.”

So, do women get informed consent? Do they understand the risks of implants? After a screening of my film last year at Boston College, a young man raised his hand to make a comment. A young woman who appears in the film got saline implants and lost sensation in her nipples. This a possible risks of implants that was clearly on her surgical permission form she signed. Now did she read it, did she understand it, did she want the implants despite this possibility?

This particular young man was completely baffled why a woman would get implants if loss of nipple sensation was a possible risk. I do think though if a young man was going to have a penile implant and he was told that he may possibly lose sensation, I can say with fair certainty that he would say “No thank you! How I feel is important than anyone’s perception of how I look.” Do women feel the same way?

Lorelai Kluever works at Our Bodies, Ourselves.

The recent announcement of Kelly Rowland’s breast augmentation can be understood as another prime example of the media’s failure to properly address the issue of breast implant safety. Though I do not watch MTV or any of the plastic surgery reality TV shows that seem to attract substantial audiences these days, I would assume that CNN would provide a more objective perspective on this subject. This recent five minute CNN segment invited E! TV host Ashlan Gorse, as well as self-esteem expert Jessica Weiner, to lead the conversation. Although Jessica Weiner mentions that breast implant surgery can be deadly, she fails to ask Weiner to elaborate on safety issues, or to discuss whether or not Kelly Rowland was adequately informed of the health risks prior to her surgery. Instead, she turns the conversation back to Kelly’s personal reasoning for breast implants (to fill out a top) and the influence that Kelly Rowland’s surgery has on young girls in general.

Though I see the importance of analyzing the impact of celebrities’ plastic surgery choices on young women, I think that it’s also necessary to go beyond the harm of imposing unrealistic beauty standards. Breast implant surgery poses substantial threats to physical health and well-being, and the failure of many plastic surgeons to fully inform women of these risks only underscores the need for more responsible media coverage of this topic. The absence of adequate discussion of breast implant safety in the media and elsewhere has resulted in many poorly-informed college-age women. After speaking with several friends and college students who had the opportunity to see Carol Ciancutti-Leyva’s amazing documentary, Absolutely Safe, I was struck by their similar reactions: utter astonishment at how little they had heard previously about these safety concerns.

I recently developed and distributed an informal survey that was filled out by 18 college students, the majority of whom are students at UMass Boston. The first section asked students where they have seen ads for breast implants, whether the ads gave them any sense of the risks involved in the surgery, and if they know anyone who had breast implant surgery. The majority of students (13 out of 18) had seen ads for breast implants, most often in magazines/ newspapers, on television, and on billboards. Two students mentioned seeing ads in their doctor’s office. Not a single student who had seen these ads for implants felt that they offered some sense of the risks involved with this surgery. Four students said that they knew a friend who has implants, and two wrote further that their friends were happy with them and haven’t experienced any problems yet. (Many health problems associated with breast implants can develop further down the road.)

For the second half of the survey, students checked off which risks they were aware of from a list of 13 potential breast implant surgery complications. Only three students were aware of more than half of these risks, and the majority were aware of only a few. The most frequently reported were: capsular contraction, infection, rupture, migration, problems with breastfeeding, and loss of sensitivity.This informal survey suggests that unbalanced and sensationalized media coverage of breast implant surgery as well as irresponsible breast implant advertising will encourage many women to make choices that could seriously affect their well-being.