Longstanding concern exists regarding the potential for women with breast implants to experience delayed detection of breast cancer. Furthermore, survival among cosmetic breast implant patients who subsequently develop breast cancer is a concern. Since 1976, this institution has monitored cancer incidence in a cohort of 3182 women who underwent cosmetic breast augmentation between 1959 and 1981. The distributions of stage at diagnosis and survival of the 37 women who subsequently developed in situ or invasive breast cancer were compared with the observed population distributions. The distribution of stage at diagnosis for cosmetic breast implant patients who subsequently developed breast cancer was virtually identical to that of all breast cancer patients in Los Angeles County who were of the same age and race, and were diagnosed during the same time period. Furthermore, the 5-year survival rate of the 37 patients did not differ from that which would be expected based on rates established by the U.S. National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program.
These results suggest that cosmetic breast implant patients are not at increased risk of delayed detection of breast cancer, nor do they suffer a poorer prognosis when breast cancer does occur. Although the number of breast cancer patients in this study is small, the results are highly consistent with the existing epidemiologic evidence related to breast cancer detection and survival among breast implant patients. Although breast implant patients should continue appropriate breast cancer screening behavior, there seems to be no cause for alarm.
Recent studies have consistently shown that risk of breast cancer is not increased among women with breast implants. 1-7 Furthermore, although population-based studies show that the diagnosis of breast cancer is not delayed, as indicated by clinical stage at diagnosis, 8 reports of case series are mixed, with both favorable 9-12 and unfavorable 13,14 results. It has been speculated that breast cancers may be more aggressive among patients with breast implants than among those without, 15 resulting in a poorer survival rate among implant patients. In a cohort of more than 3000 augmentation mammaplasty patients, we have observed 37 incident breast cancer patients who were diagnosed before 1993. We compared the 5-year and individual year survival intervals of these patients with those derived from population-based figures obtained by the National Cancer Institute's SEER registries, adjusting for breast cancer stage and age at diagnosis.