Myth: Breast implants increase your risk of breast cancer.
In most cases, breast implants have not been found to increase breast cancer risk. Rather, breast implants can lead to scar tissue formation in the breast and can make mammograms a bit harder to read.
While it’s important that we all do our research and exercise caution around intensive surgeries — like breast alterations — there are also many women who undergo breast reconstruction post-breast cancer. Therefore, it’s important that we are keeping complicated topics and information from being misinterpreted and spread as frightening rumours.
In most cases, breast implants have not been found to increase breast cancer risk. Rather, breast implants can lead to scar tissue formation in the breast and can make mammograms a bit harder to read.
According to the American Cancer Society and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a possible association has been found between breast implants and breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL). The FDA and the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest that BIA-ALCL is an extremely rare form of cancer that is more likely to occur in the scar tissue around textured implants, as opposed to smooth ones. Still, most research concludes that this occurrence is highly rare and, when it does occur, is very responsive to treatment.
