Breast Implant Exchange

What implant exchange involves

An implant exchange replaces implants you already have. Sometimes that is because something has gone wrong with them. Just as often it is because a decision made a decade ago no longer fits the person who made it.

The FDA’s guidance is the honest starting point: breast implants are not lifetime devices, and you should assume that additional surgery will be part of having them.

Exchange suits healthy women with existing implants, whether the reason is a finding on a scan, a change in the breast, or a change of mind about size.

An exchange usually goes through the incision from your first operation, so it rarely adds a scar. The old implants come out, the capsule is dealt with as your findings require, and the new implants go in. Contracture and a ruptured gel implant are both recognised reasons to remove capsule tissue. Where the capsule is soft and healthy, leaving it alone avoids a longer and more invasive operation for no benefit.

Choosing the new implant is the part worth taking time over. Size, profile, and whether saline or silicone suits you are decisions made in front of a mirror with sizers, not from a catalogue. A lift is sometimes added: if the skin has stretched or the nipple has settled low, changing the implant alone will not lift the breast, and Dr. Hosn will say so rather than let you find out afterwards.

Bring your implant records: manufacturer, size, type, and the year of your original surgery. Bring recent imaging if you have had any. Be ready to say what you would change about how you look now, in your own words rather than in cc.

The typical patient meets with Dr. Hosn three times before proceeding with any major procedure. That matters especially for breast surgery, where those conversations define your expectations for size, shape, and scarring well before any commitment is made.