Defective breast implants alarm spreads across Latin America

The plastic surgeon’s office Sousa Ignacio is so full that women have to make a tail coming out of the reception room. There are university students in their twenties, forties housewives, middle-class clerks: all are afraid that their breast implants have been torn and want to know when they can get.

Like thousands of women around the world, many in Latin America are consulting their doctors, fearful of the consequences to their health that may have faulty breast implants produced by the now defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP). In some cases, implants, produced with industrial silicone have been opened, and this possibility is causing many women to replace them.

“ The alarm is growing like a snowball,”said Dr. Sousa, a plastic surgeon who has been treating dozens of patients every day since the news broke in December that the French authorities recommended that the implants were removed . Read Article