Can You Keep Your Old Breast Implants? What Judge Judy Got Right

Somehow I've made it onto Judge Judy TikTok, and it has collided with my world with one particular case.

On her newer show, Judy Justice, Judge Judy heard from a woman who'd had her old silicone breast implants removed and kept them, in a bag in her closet. Then her roommate's child got into the closet, found the implants, and played with them with the dog, and the dog destroyed them.

So she sued her ex-roommate, asking for $3,500, the total cost of her surgery, to replace the implants.

A few things about this case are funny. Judge Judy ended up giving her $1 and said the implants were worthless. And that's actually correct.

Breast implants are technically a single-use device, meaning you can only use them one time.

So an implant that has been sitting in a closet has no medical value to anyone.

The value of the implants is also a lot less than the $3,500 she paid. And that $3,500 included the implants, the surgery, the anesthesia, everything, which is insanely low for a silicone breast augmentation. (If you're comparing quotes, here's how surgical pricing actually breaks down.)

The implants themselves typically have a list price anywhere from about $1,000 to $1,400. So if you somehow had brand-new implants in your closet, I guess you could sue for that amount.

But as a patient, you'd never have them in the first place. Implants can only be ordered by certified medical professionals.

There are some cases where we use the same set of implants, and they're very different from this one.

Say you come in within the first year or maybe two after surgery, and your implant is sitting a little too high. We take you back to the operating room, do a little revision of your capsule, pull the same implant down, and that's the end of your surgery.

Technically that's off-label, because implants are a single-use device. But I think it's a reasonable risk to take:

I've written more about when I'm comfortable reusing an implant, and about when replacing it during a revision makes more sense.

After your implants are out of your body, you can take them home if you want. I don't really see a problem with that.

The one exception: I would not take them home if they're ruptured, because they can be a sticky mess. (Ruptured silicone implants cause their own problems even before they come out.)

As for what people do with them, I've had some people tell me they use them as ice packs. They put them in the freezer. Which is kind of strange. Or it's sentimental value, like the woman in this case. They were meaningful to her, so she kept them.

One more thing to know. Once implants are out of the body, they're no longer sterile, of course.

You'll see videos of people with saline implants, the ones with salt water inside, with things growing in them. That can happen when they're outside of the body. It's not something that really happens inside the body.

• The shell is permeable to air. That's why you'll see air getting into an implant that's been sitting on a counter for a while. It doesn't happen in your body, because there's no air in that area.
• Bacteria, fungus, and whatever else is in your environment can get into the implant and grow.

So if you see a video of an implant with all kinds of weird stuff growing in it, remember that's what's happening. (The scary brown chunks in a lot of those videos are often something else entirely: usually Betadine, not mold.)

• Judge Judy was right: old implants are worthless. They're a single-use device and can't be re-sterilized and put back in years later
• Implants alone list for roughly $1,000 to $1,400, and only certified medical professionals can order them
• We do sometimes reuse the same implant in an early revision. It's off-label, but it never left a sterile environment
• You can take your implants home after they're removed, just not ruptured ones
• Once they're out, they aren't sterile, so things can grow inside a saline implant on your counter in a way they don't inside your body