Trish Hammond: I’m here today with Dr. Niamh Corduff, and we’re going to have a bit of a chat about the new-age implants that have just come onto the market called the Motiva Implant. Thank you for taking the time today.
Dr Niamh Corduff: You’re welcome.
Trish Hammond: Lovely. Tell us… What is it about these implants that makes them so new and so unique and certainly just be above the rest.
Dr Niamh Corduff: I think with breast implants, it’s been a long history, a long progression from where we came back in the, well, in the late ’60s when the first ones were invented. Everybody knows, and we’ve been hearing the news, there’s been lots of problems and issues, most of them blown complete out of proportion, but they’re far from perfect.
We’re still far from perfect, but now what we’ve got is the next generation, where they’ve gone right back to the drawing boards. They’ve looked at that we, as surgeons, and we, as women, have been complaining about and saying, “I don’t like this. I don’t like that.”
One of the big problems is capsular contraction, which is hardening around your implants. There’s a lot of scar tissue. That’s all it is. It’s scar tissue. It wraps the implant up, but a lot the time, that scar tissue shrinks down, and so that you get this speed hump, or it deforms the breast. It looks horrible. It can be painful. It can be ugly, and that has been one of the big issues. If we can prevent that, that’s a big thing.
The other problem has been with a lot of women that I see, and I relate, too, being female and older, is we don’t want to look like … Big round implants at our age looks like we should be trading our wares on the corner. We want to look as natural as possible, just to restore some shape and not to be out there. It’s for us at home, in our clothes. We want to feel really comfortable and normal.
Trish Hammond: A bit more feminine … Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Niamh Corduff: That’s where the anatomical teardrop implants worked well to a certain extent, but the problem was, and I’ve seen with a lot of my patients is that they can turn. People who are very fit, very active … These implants look really good when they’re sitting there apart from they don’t move. They’re a bit rocky, but they can flip, or they can turn.
Especially very active people … Runners … Swimmers … ?
Trish Hammond: We’re way more active than we used to be many years ago anyway.
Dr Niamh Corduff: We’re all trying to keep the pounds down and get those muscles going. That’s a problem, is the turning of implants where we still want the shape, but we don’t want them to turn. The other issue is then patients don’t know what they’ve got in.
Trish Hammond: Yeah, right.
Dr Niamh Corduff:
We see patients 10 years, 15 years, 20 years down the track, and you’re going, “Okay, so what have you got in?” “Uhhhh. I’ve got-”
Trish Hammond: Implants.
Dr Niamh Corduff: “I’ve got an implant. I don’t know.” They don’t even know it’s saline or silicone. They’ve addressed that issue with coming out with this tiny micro label that they can paint on. It does no harm. It’s completely innocuous, but you can detect it with a special transponder. Detect it … You can see what the implant type is, which is great, so we can just …
You don’t have to constantly trying to chase up records, and you can’t even remember who did it or what hospital or whatever, which is great. You know what it’s like as we get older.
Trish Hammond: Yeah, of course.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Sort of forget a few.
Trish Hammond: Oh, I can’t remember what I had for breakfast never mind what implants I had put in 20 years ago or something.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Exactly. A lot of things, but the biggest thing has been for me as a physician is understanding the science behind it and the technology. It’s everybody knows. It’s smooth. It’s textured, and all that has been about trying to deal with this hardening of implants.
What they’ve done is gone right back into the laboratory and looked at what has been done in cardiac, vascular, urology, everybody else that puts foreign body devices in … This new understanding which started to become in the literature about 10 years ago where cells recognize and act on, actually, the shape, the lie of the land, the topography of the tissues they sit on.
You get these cells, and it’s on a foreign thing, but some things they like. Some things they don’t like. If they don’t like it, they’ll reproduce more and form more scar tissue, and also, they send out these messages which relate to other cells which cause inflammation. Now, if we can get on top of that and keep the basic cells happy …
What they’ve done is worked out if you have these little tiny nanometer-like space-age-size bumps, certain height, certain spacing … Those cells will just sit there, and they’re happy, and they just say, “Oh, yeah. We’re cool. I’m not going to do anything now.” You don’t get that thickening. You don’t get that inflammation. You don’t get the scar tissue.
Trish Hammond: Does that help with the double-bubble thing as well?
Dr Niamh Corduff: Double-bubble is more of an anatomy.
Trish Hammond: Okay.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Problem …
Trish Hammond: It’s just going to happen if it’s going to happen.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Usually, because what’s the double-bubble is where you’ve got a really strong memory in your skin, and it’s not going to stretch. It takes time to stretch, so there’s surgical tricks that we can do to try and deal with it. It’s one of the hardest things we do try and deal, but a lot of it is based on the patient’s original anatomy. Trying to … When you pick, you know who’s going to be a little bit susceptible to it, you say, “Hey, I think you’re at risk, so let’s just keep everything a little bit smaller, go a little bit conservative. If you do-
Trish Hammond: Avoids that …
Dr Niamh Corduff: … “get a double effect, it’ll just be absolutely tiny.”
Trish Hammond: Can we grab one and have a look at?
Dr Niamh Corduff: Going back to the issue about the implants turning. Trying to get one … If you imagine what they’ve done is they … There are physical characteristics to tissues, and this comes back to mechanics and physics. It starts to get a bit heavy …. What they’ve managed to do, design, is that the gel that will flow, but it won’t collapse.
Trish Hammond: Right. Okay.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Which is what we’ve always struggled with … We had in the originals … We had quite runny gels, but the trouble is that gel would disintegrate, but also, it would collapse the implant. It’d get falls and wrinkles and visibility, which everybody knows about. That’s one of the reasons that the anatomical shapes were developed.
What you’ve got with these ones is you’ve got a gel that actually flows into a natural shape but holds the shape, so it doesn’t collapse. It’s just great, so I’ve got a …. You can have a round implant that can turn and turn and turn. It doesn’t [inaudible 00:06:51] because it just flows into the natural shape. Fabulous for those older women who want to look natural … Fabulous for …
Trish Hammond: Still want the upper pole.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Still want the upper pole and for reconstruction. That’s beautiful. If you see … This is more the round one, and it bounces straight back up.
Trish Hammond: Yep. Yep.
Dr Niamh Corduff: When it flows and drops, it’s still sticks together and holds it shape.
Trish Hammond: Got it. Got it.
Dr Niamh Corduff: That’s where they’re very different in many ways.
Trish Hammond: I don’t know what it is. They just feel different, like I’ve got … They just feel a little bit different. They feel a bit more … I don’t know if that’s the right thing to say, but natural … It just feels a little bit different.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Yeah. They’re softer, so what they’ve tried to copy … The more the characteristics of the breasts themselves.
Trish Hammond: Yeah, right. Before these came out … When was the last time a new implant came out to market?
Dr Niamh Corduff: There’s lots … Have been new implants coming out. The new technology …
Trish Hammond: New technology …
Dr Niamh Corduff: This has been the first time for ages because, quite rightly, it’s … The companies develop implants, but then they have to submit it through the regulatory authorities, and Australia, like America, like France, like the UK, have very strict regulatory bodies.
It costs the companies a fortune to get through and takes a lot of time. The regulation bodies are there to protect us as women.
Trish Hammond: Of course, so we don’t get the same thing happening again.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Yeah. That’s what it’s there for, so it takes a long time. It takes a lot of money to get them through. They have to be really sure this is really great.
Trish Hammond: All right. Well, thank you so much. This is really exciting, so if you’re looking at having a breast augmentation, and you want to try out these new-age implants, they’ve just been approved in through the TGA, so if you want to know who does them in Australia, drop us an email at [email protected]. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Dr Niamh Corduff: My pleasure.
Trish Hammond: Thank you.
Dr Niamh Corduff: Thank you.
GET IN TOUCH WITH DR NIAMH CORDUFF:
If you’d like to get in touch with Dr Niamh Corduff, here’s a link to the clinic.