Silicone Breast Implants Approved

Panic mongers sounded alarms and got the FDA to ban silicone breast implants. Connective tissue disorder, Chronic fatigue, cancer and more were the frights put into anyone wanting to get an implant. All this after a million women had them and expressed satisfaction.

Science and its weight of evidence definitely have won. Over the past decade a wealth of information has been presented on the silicone gel filled breast implants that have concluded that they are safe and effective. Risks like breast pain, hardening around the implant and ruptures were occurrence but were never known to cause cancer.

Instead saline implants have dominated the market but with the approval that will probably change. Silicone is said to look and feel more natural. Plastic surgeons and the two dominant Southern California-based makers expect a boom in sales of the device. Many in the industry believe a large percentage of women could quickly switch from saline implants to Silicone. In most countries where both saline and silicone products are sold, silicone implants make up nearly 90% of the market.

A surge in demand for silicone would be welcome for the two companies that dominate the trade, Mentor Corp. of Santa Barbara and Allergan Inc. of Irvine. These two companies' sales for saline implants were about $230 million. Silicon costs twice as much as saline and therefore a windfall of profits is expected. Wall Street analysts predict a $2 billion a year sales figure. Stocks of both the California based makers of Silicone Implants have shot up.

Both Mentor and Allergan have started their campaigns for their silicone implant products. Their websites that were up hours after the FDA's announcement; Mentor's site is at mentor4me.com and Allergan's is at breastimplantstoday.com. Mentor expects 40% rise in its breast implant sales of silicone products where as Allergan couldn't provide any sales estimates.