One of the most popular cosmetic treatments and a common reason women visit a plastic surgeon in London is for breast augmentation, either to enlarge, reduce or reshape what is naturally there.
People choose to get boob jobs for a variety of reasons, much like any other form of plastic surgery. Whilst for some the reason is purely cosmetic, for others, it is about restoring the natural shape of breasts after another surgery, or as part of other treatments such as mastectomies.
The earliest forms of breast augmentation surgery were typically breast reductions, mostly done to help relieve back pain that was not being helped by the tight corsets worn in the era.
The earliest known successful breast surgery was a reconstruction treatment undertaken in 1895 by pioneering surgeon Vincenz Czerny, who took a benign fatty tumour in the lumbar of a patient and used it to restore the symmetry of the patient’s breast after a tumour was removed.
The first attempt at creating a breast implant, as opposed to using existing fat tissue from elsewhere, was by the surgeon Robert Gersuny in 1889, who attempted to inject white paraffin (the ingredient vaseline is made from) into the breast.
The logic was that vaseline can be heated to make a liquid but then solidifies as it gets colder and could therefore be used for implants and cosmetic injections.
It went disastrously, as the paraffin broke up and started to form nodules around the body that were exceptionally difficult to remove and lasted for years, sometimes requiring emergency amputation to save the patient’s life.
For the first half of the twentieth century, surgeons tried nearly every known material possible to find one that was suitable for a breast implant. These include, but are far from limited to:
- Glass orbs,
- Ground-up rubber
- Ivory,
- Synthetic wool,
- Gutta-percha latex,
- Plastic chips,
- Plastic foam sponge,
- Balls of plastic tape,
- Polyester,
- Polyvinyl alcohol sponges and sacs,
- Teflon-silicone prosthetics,
- Silicone rubber.
These all had various issues, particularly as the implant hardened, but there was promise found in using silicone, albeit not as an injectable filler as some doctors had tried in the 1950s.
The First Modern Breast Enlargement
The first breakthrough came in 1962 thanks to the work of plastic surgeons Thomas Cronin and Frank Gerow, who created the first recognisably modern breast implant. This took the form of a silicone prosthesis that was filled with silicone gel that would maintain its softness.
This was the implant used in the first modern breast enlargement surgery when Timmy Jean Lindsey had the procedure, and even fifty years later said she was really happy with the results.
Parallel to this discovery was the development of a saline breast implant, which would in 1992 be the only available type of breast implant available in the United States until the restrictions were lifted in 2006 after confirmations of their safety.
There have been constant evolutions in implant design ever since that help improve the feel of the breast, the strength of the implant and the shape to make them feel more natural.
