THE HEALTH-STATUS OF WOMEN FOLLOWING COSMETIC SURGERY

A retrospective study was performed to determine the frequency of new symptoms and diseases after silicone breast implantation. Questionnair es were mailed to 826 women who made up a breast implant group (n = 51 6) and a control group who had undergone blepharoplasty (n = 124), lip osuction (n = 111), or rhinoplasty (n = 75). Responses were obtained f rom 370 women (45 percent); however, 68 of these patients (18 percent) were considered ineligible. The overall response rate was 59 percent for the breast implant group and 46 percent for controls. The 302 elig ible women included patients with silicone breast implants (n = 222) a nd controls (n = 80). Women with implants were significantly younger t han controls, the median age of women with breast implants being 37 ye ars compared with 46.5 years for controls (p < 0.0001). We compared th e incidence of 23 symptoms and 4 connective-tissue diseases after cosm etic surgery in the two groups. The symptoms of swollen glands under a rms (p < 0.05) and tender glands under arms (p < 0.01) were statistica lly more frequent in the breast implant group. The symptom change in s kin color was more common in the controls (p < 0.001). The Bonferroni correction for multiple (27) endpoints adjusts the 5 and 1 percent sig nificance cutoff points to 0.00185 and 0.00037, respectively, leaving only change of skin color significant at the 5 percent level on the ad justed data. No cases of scleroderma or lupus were found, and the inci dence of arthritis was not significantly different between the implant and control groups.