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Cristina Tamba opted for a career as a dermal therapist because she wanted to help women look and feel good.
But when the Gold Coast resident got breast implants in 2010, she never imagined that the cosmetic procedure would have the opposite effect on her.
"I decided to have the implants after I had my daughter and I had very bad asymmetry … and it was fashionable at the time," Ms Tamba said.
"I slowly got chronic, debilitating anxiety, suicidal thoughts – which was bizarre – and then complete loss of my bodily functions in my right side of my body and my bladder."
The symptoms, along with brain fog, joint pain, fatigue, rashes and hair loss, are commonly linked to breast implant illness or systemic symptoms associated with breast implants (SSBI).
SSBI is not a recognised medical condition and research into the issue is ongoing.
Ms Tamba, 39, saw various specialists, including a psychiatrist and neurologist, but they were unable to find the underlying cause of her symptoms.
She decided to get her breast implants removed last year in the hope it would alleviate her symptoms.
"As soon as I got them out, the mental brain fog completely went, my vision – which was blurry – gone, and I haven't had to take any prescribed medication for my anxiety and panic disorder," Ms Tamba said.
From implants to explants
Removing breast implants, also known as explant surgery, was once a rare procedure but it is becoming more common.
Data from the Australian Breast Device Registry (ABDR) shows explant surgery increased for patients with implants for aesthetic enhancement from 0.4 per cent in 2016 to seven per cent in 2022.
Explant surgery also increased among those who got implants for reconstructive (post-cancer) purposes from 0.8 per cent to 5.2 per cent over the same period.
Gold Coast plastic and reconstructive surgeon Peter Widdowson, who has been practising for more than 40 years, has witnessed the trend firsthand.
"I'm seeing more and more people coming along with the condition [SSBI] where the patient themselves has been ill for a number of years," he said.
"They come along, wanting their breast implants out, thinking that the breast implant itself was a foreign body … and they just want to be healthy without having any foreign body or breast implant inside them."
Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons president Nicola Dean said SSBI was not the only reason more women were getting implants removed.
She said personal preference and a greater awareness of other health risks such as breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma were contributing factors.
"Some women are saying, 'I don't want to have implants for making the breasts bigger if it's going to give me risks of medical problems down the track,'" Dr Dean said.
'Pain was just terrible'
Breast cancer survivor Julie Roberts decided to get implants after a double mastectomy in 2012.
The 66-year-old Gold Coast resident had her implants replaced three times in a decade because they repeatedly flipped and she suffered symptoms similar to Ms Tamba's.
"The pain was just terrible — I used to walk around hunched up all the time," Ms Roberts said.
She got the implants removed last year and underwent a form of reconstructive surgery that involved the transfer of tissue from the abdomen to recreate breasts.
The operation was intense, but Ms Roberts said it left her feeling like her "old self" again.
"I've got no pain and also my breasts are really soft and warm," she said.
"They feel like me, whereas before the implants were hard like a rock, and they were cold."
The benefits of removal
An Australian-first study has found many women experienced relief after having explant surgery.
Doctors studied 226 women who presented with SSBI to better understand the condition.
For the 77 women who proceeded with surgery, 85 per cent experienced a significant reduction in the severity and number of symptoms after six months.
Sydney-based plastic surgeon and Macquarie University Health Sciences Centre professor Anand Deva, who led the research, said the results were promising but pinpointing the actual cause of the symptoms required more research.
"These findings alone should signal to both patients who think they have SSBI and colleagues who are looking at these women to take this very seriously, exclude other diseases, and then, by all means, offer these women implant removal," he said.
About 22,000 breast implant insertions were reported to the ABDR in 2022.
Dr Deva urged plastic surgeons to ensure women knew the risks before surgery and had their implants checked regularly.
A Department of Health and Aged Care spokesperson said it recognised the importance of the new data to "assist guidance in regulatory decision making" and encouraged patients and health care professionals to report any adverse events while research continued into SSBI.