During the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel hearings on silicone breast implants in October 2003, panelists expressed concern about the manufacturer's reported 20 percent re-operation rate for silicone breast implants.
"Although plastic surgeons began to use saline implants after silicone implants were banned by the FDA, the re-operation rates for primary breast augmentation have remained largely unchanged for more than a decade," said John Tebbetts, MD, ASPS member and study author. "We originally created these algorithms to help manage potential problems and educate patients about the benefits and risks of breast augmentation. What we also found was that the algorithms significantly reduced the rate of re-operation, increased patient safety and made patients happier about the results of their procedure."
Directly responding to the FDA's concerns, a group of board-certified plastic surgeons formed the Breast Augmentation Surgeons for Patients Initiative (BAPSI). They adopted the algorithms from Dr. Tebbetts' practice and expanded them to address a number of clinical situations, including re-operations to change the size of implant, capsular contracture, infection, implant displacement and silent rupture of silicone implants.
According to the study, using algorithms, step-by-step problem-solving procedures for surgical situations, reduced the overall re-operation rate to 3 percent in 1,662 reported cases over seven years. The algorithms measure five critical charact
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Contact: Denise Snyder
media@plasticsurgery.org
847-228-9900
American Society of Plastic Surgeons
10-Nov-2004