Can Breast Implants Cause a Facial Parasite? A Surgeon's Response

You may have seen the recent news about Brandi Glanville claiming that a facial parasite and the disfigurement of her face were caused by damaged breast implants. Over the last year, she's been in and out of the news with pretty severe facial deformity that she attributes to an undiagnosed parasite — reportedly seen by over 20 doctors without a clear diagnosis.

Most recently, she says ruptured breast implants found on ultrasound — nearly 20 years old — had silicone in her lymph nodes that were blocking drainage from her face, leading to her condition.

First and foremost, if you have silicone implants, it's very important that you're properly imaging them. After five years, you should get either an ultrasound or an MRI, and repeat every other year after that. If we catch ruptured implants quickly, we minimize the chance of:

• Silicone migrating to lymph nodes
• Silicone getting into breast tissue
• Developing a capsular contracture

Different areas of the body drain to different sets of lymph nodes — that's why we check specific lymph node locations for specific cancers. For breast cancer, we usually check the armpit (axillary lymph nodes) because that's the typical drainage pathway of the breast.

We see the same pattern with silicone in lymph nodes — it's most common in the axillary lymph nodes. You can sometimes find silicone in the mammary nodes, and occasionally even in more distant locations. But silicone in the nodes that would block drainage from the face — and in amounts large enough to cause lymphatic blockage — is not something I have ever seen.

It's relatively common to find silicone in lymph nodes, particularly with older ruptured silicone implants. But it's very rarely an issue — it's usually just an incidental finding that isn't causing any trouble.

Can you have blockage of lymphatic drainage from long-ruptured silicone implants? Technically yes, but it's exceedingly rare. I've literally never seen it in my entire career.

My suspicion is there's more to this story. Silicone implants do not lead to parasite infections, and they don't lead to blocked drainage of the face, even when ruptured.

No device is perfect, and it's very important that if you have an implant, you recognize you have a medical device that requires maintenance:

• Keep a relationship with your plastic surgeon
• Do your scheduled imaging (ultrasound or MRI)
• If you have a problem, catch it and manage it quickly so you don't develop complications

Which probably aren't going to be parasites of the face.