Used Breast Implants for Sale on Ebay... The World Really Has Gone Mad

On a typical Saturday morning my 4 year old daughter wakes me up at around 6:30am and we slowly get ourselves ready for her football training starting at 8:30. This morning was very different...

At 6:20am my phone woke me with a ping and when I looked at the message I was shocked.  I actually had to check that I was awake and not dreaming.  A young woman from the West Midlands has listed her used Motiva implants for sale on eBay!

Motiva implants have the best safety profile of any implant on the market with 0 cases of late onset seroma, double encapsulation or ALCL and rates of capsular contracture and rupture less than 1% after 5 years*.  Establishment Labs, the manufacturer of Motiva implants spends huge amounts on R&D and works with some of the leading minds in engineering, biotechnology and surgery to ensure that the products they produce are the safest available and provide the best possible results for patients.  The prospect of a secondary market in used breast implants threatens these efforts and puts patients at risk.

Whilst I am confident that no surgeon in the UK would entertain the idea of implanting a used breast implant; I am unfortunately less confident that this will be the case around the world.  It is entirely possible that someone could buy these implants, believing the listing that states that the implants are sterile, and take them to a ‘cowboy’ surgeon’ in another country.  Something like this could potentially put the patient’s life at risk.

I am however comforted by the fact that these implants contain Motiva’s exclusive Qinside Safety Technology.  This technology incorporates a micro-transponder that can be read by a surgeon from outside the body using a special Q reader.  Reading the micro-transponder provides a code that can be used to register the implants.  Once registered these implants will be flagged if someone tries to register them again. It would therefore be very easy to see if these implants had been used before.  It will also allow Establishment labs to report any surgeon who removes implants and allows them to be reused.

At Belle, our mission is to provide products that offer significant benefits to patients and surgeons so anything that jeopardises patient safety is a huge concern for us.  With this in mind we have contacted eBay and they have agreed to remove the listing however this could take up to 48 hours.  I just hope that with all of the media coverage, these are not sold before the listing is removed.