After a decade in the market, Motiva® implants continue to boast an impressive low complication rate in approximately 1.8 million implants sold worldwide and provide women with an optimal safety profile. But when we talk about the safety of our implants, you will often hear words like ‘improved biocompatibility’, ‘lowered immune response’, or even ‘healthy capsules’!
But what do all these things mean, and why are they important when it comes to breast implants and our bodies? Well, as it just so happens, we have broken it down for you in this blog. But first, to allow us to understand why these things are important, we need to look at what happens to our bodies when we undergo breast augmentation surgery.
Breast Implant Surfaces and the Immune Response
To achieve breast augmentation surgery, your doctor starts by making an incision into the skin and creating a pocket for your breast implant to be positioned; this requires cutting the skin and the deep breast tissues. Next, your doctor inserts the implant into the pocket using sterile techniques, and the wound is closed. Because there is a cut to your tissues and an implant inserted that is new to your body, your body responds by initiating an immune response.
The immune response is how your body recognizes a trauma (in this case, your doctor’s incision) and how it reacts to the foreign object (in this case, the breast implant). The immune response aims to heal the body and remove any potential harm. Part of the healing process is for the immune response to create a capsule around the implant; however, in some cases, the capsule becomes thick, fibrous, and hard around the implant, and that’s when capsular contracture can occur! This is where it gets very interesting because different implant surfaces can make the immune response act at different levels; therefore, we see higher complication rates with some implant brands than others.
This was highlighted in a recent study undertaken by the Professor Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in one of the world’s well-renowned and most respected journals for providing high-standard research to the biomedical engineering and scientific communities!! Impressive! Huh?
The study they conducted looked at how the immune system responds to 6 breast implant brands, including both smooth and textured surfaces and, of course, the advanced SmoothSilk® surface of Motiva® implants! They found that not only did Motiva® implants reduce the inflammatory response (meaning that they attracted fewer inflammatory cells during the healing stage), but they also produced the right number of T-Regulatory cells (which are special cells that stimulate the immune response during the healing stage). Having the right amount of these cells means that the immune response is not overstimulated, potentially causing post- operative inflammation complications, but also that there is not too few of these cells so that the body doesn’t heal itself properly! In fact, they found that unlike textured or traditional completely smooth implants, which provoked a higher immune response, creating increased inflammation and thicker fibrous capsules, Motiva® implants produced a healthy thin capsule around the implant.
Finally, leaving the best until last, they concluded that Motiva® implants showed an improved biocompatibility compared to all the other surfaces. Biocompatibility is a term used to describe a material that is harmonious with living tissue, such as breast tissues, and is able to stay in the body without the body rejecting it. So, when we speak about our implant having an enhanced biocompatibility, we mean that we have created the appropriate conditions for your body to recognize the implant’s surface as its own without trying to fight off the implant through the immune response! So, you can safely say that your Motiva® implants create thin, healthy capsules, lower the immune and fibrotic response, have improved biocompatibility, and offer an optimal safety profile, all backed up with real-world data in a long-term scientific study!
The content provided here is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice or as substitute for a consultation with a physician.
Reference
Doloff, J. C., Veiseh, O., de Mezerville, R., Sforza, M., Perry, T. A., Haupt, J., Jamiel, M., Chambers, C., Nash, A., Aghlara- Fotovat, S., Stelzel, J. L., Bauer, S. J., Neshat, S. Y., Hancock, J., Romero, N. A., Hidalgo, Y. E., Leiva, I. M., Munhoz, A. M., Bayat, A., … Langer, R. (2021). The surface topography of silicone breast implants mediates the foreign body response in mice, rabbits and humans. Nature Biomedical Engineering 2021, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-021-00739-4
