Characteristics of a population of women with breast implants compared with women seeking other types of plastic surgery

Several previous studies have shown that breast implant patients demonstrat e a number of differences compared with the general population. However, st udies have not compared patients with breast implants with women receiving other types of plastic surgery, of interest because this latter group has b een proposed as a comparison group for assessing the long-term health effec ts experienced by breast implant patients. Questionnaire data obtained from 7447 breast implant patients and 2203 patients with Other types plastic su rgery were collected during the course of a retrospective cohort study, to determine whether implant patients demonstrate different characteristics co mpared with a more restricted group of patients. In contrast to previous in vestigations that compared implant patients with the general population, di stinctive differences with respect to family income, number of pregnancies, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, or histories of previous gynecolog ic operations or operations for benign breast disease were not found. Howev er, implant patients were significantly more likely than other plastic surg ery patients to be white, have low levels of education, have early ages at first birth, be thin, and be screened frequently for breast disease. Furthe rmore, implant patients reported somewhat greater use of exogenous hormones and familial histories of rheumatoid arthritis. These results support the notion that other plastic surgery patients are a more appropriate compariso n group than women in the general population for studies of the health effe cts of breast implants; however, there continue to be distinctive character istics possessed by breast implant patients, which need to be taken into ac count in an assessment of what disease effects can be uniquely attributed t o silicone breast implants.