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Breast Implant Timeline History


Our obsession with beauty and the curvature of the female body never seems to wane. From stuffing our bras with tissues and socks, to temporary bra inserts and padding, to the real thing - saline and silicone breast implants.


It's hard to believe, but little over 124 years ago, Austrian-German surgeon Vincenz Czerny, known as ‘the father of plastic surgery’, performed breast reconstruction on a woman at the University of Heidelberg.



Here's a look at the history of breast implants and the timeline:


1895 - Austrian-German surgeon Vincenz Czerny, known as "the Father of Plastic Surgery", performs breast reconstruction on a woman at the University of Heidelberg.


1945 - After World War II in Japan, prostitutes catering to the tastes of the U.S. military, begin injecting goat's milk, paraffin, and eventually industrial silicone directly into their breasts.


1962 - Thomas Cronin and Frank Gerow invent the silicone breast implant. Timmie Jean Lindsey of Texas becomes the first woman to have the procedure.


1965 - Henri Arion, a plastic surgeon, was responsible for introducing breast implants to France.


1976 - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates silicone breast implants, subjecting them to controls and performance standards.


1980s - Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Health Research Group in Washington, D.C. sends out warning signals that silicone breast implants cause cancer.


1982 - The FDA places breast implants in the more rigorous class III category, because of “reports of adverse events in the medical literature.”


1991 - Jean-Claude Mas, born in 1939, founded PIP. He began working as a butcher in his mother's butcher shop and later became a wine merchant. Subsequently, he became a medical sales representative for Bristol Myers and worked there for 15 years. At some point, Mas became friends with plastic surgeon Henri Arion. Mas and Arion launched several companies in the pursuit of capitalizing on vulnerable women seeking to attain the 'perfect' body. After Henri died in a plane crash, Jean-Claude founded Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) in France in 1991 on his own producing silicone gel breast implants.


December 1991 - Mariann Hopkins wins $7.3 million from Dow Corning for health issues linked to her ruptured implants. More than 130 lawsuits have so far been filed against Dow Corning.


January 1992 - FDA calls for a voluntary moratorium on the use of silicone gel breast implants until safety has been reviewed. Several countries follow the FDA’s lead including Germany, Spain, France, Austria, and Italy. Saline breast implants are not affected.


March 1992 - Several major medical manufacturers including Dow Corning, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Bioplasty withdraw from the silicone implant market.


April 1992 - The FDA advises that silicone breast implants should only be used for reconstruction after surgery or to correct congenital deformities.


May 1995 - Faced by massive lawsuits, Dow Corning files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and litigation were halted by the filing.


1996 - PIP begins selling saline-filled implants in the United States, but its failure to gain necessary pre-market approval in 2000 from the FDA to keep selling these implants cuts off that key market.


1997 - The Journal of the National Cancer Institute publishes a review of scores of medical studies that concludes breast implants do not cause breast cancer and that the evidence for linking implants to any other diseases as "borderline".


1997 - The first case of Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large-Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) was reported as recently as 1997 and was discovered in association with a saline-filled breast implant.


2000 - In 2000, the FDA banned silicone breast implants in the US market which had a ripple effect worldwide, however, France lifts its ban on silicone implants.


December 2000 - The United Kingdom bans PIP hydrogel implants given to 4,000 women since 1994, finding the manufacturer’s biological safety assessment of the product to be inadequate.


2001 - From 2001 until 2010, hundreds of thousands of unapproved, non-medical grade implants were sold worldwide by PIP. It was discovered that these inferior implants had a 500% higher risk of rupturing or leaking than the formerly approved PIP implants which led to increased implications that they were the causes of numerous deaths due to their systemic toxicity and induced breast cancer.


2006 - The FDA lifts its restrictions on silicone breast implants, clearing them for cosmetic use in women aged 22 and up.


2010 - Breast implantation is the most popular form of plastic surgery in the United States with 318,123 augmentations performed, 62% of which used silicone implants.


March 2010 - When the highly controversial and alarming PIP scandal become public knowledge, France’s health regulator AFSSAPS, performed an inspection of PIP’s headquarters resulting in France's health ministry launching a recall, but at that point, the company was already no longer operating and had filed for bankruptcy.


December 2011 - France’s health minister announces that the 30,000 French women with PIP implants should have them removed and it will pay for the operations. Venezuela, Germany, and the Czech Republic also advise that implants should be removed. The United Kingdom does not advise women to remove the implants, but says the National Health Service will replace implants for patients to whom it had provided the surgery.


January 26, 2012 - PIP's founder Jean-Claude Mas and CEO Claude Couty are arrested.


December 19, 2018 - Europe announces Allergan can no longer sell its Microcell and Biocell textured breast implants in Europe and subsequently Allergan suspends sales and withdraws supply of textured breast implants in European markets.


2019 - Breast implant removal surgeries continue to rise with the risks and increased knowledge of Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large-Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) and Breast Implant Illness (BII) although BII remains an unofficial diagnosis.


May 28, 2019 - Health Canada announces it has suspended the licences for Allergan's Biocell breast implants (the only macro-textured implants available in Canada).


July 24, 2019 - Following notification of updated safety information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Allergan announced a voluntary worldwide recall of Biocell® textured breast implants and tissue expanders.


These are just but a few of the many highlights of a very complicated industry.



All posts are intended strictly for educational purposes. It is not intended to make any representations or warranties about the outcome of any procedure. It is not a substitute for a thorough in-person consultation with a medical professional. If you have questions about your personal medical situation, please call your healthcare provider.

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