Between 2005 and 2022, approximately 33 million breast implant procedures were performed globally. Conservative estimates suggest 30% of women with breast implants develop systemic symptoms. That's roughly 10 million women worldwide struggling with fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, joint pain, autoimmune flares, and other symptoms they often attribute to menopause, aging, or something else entirely.
Yet most practitioners haven't been trained to recognize breast implant illness. Standard workups often return normal or inconclusive results. When labs don't clearly point to one condition, practitioners default to symptom-based diagnoses: depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome.
The patient gets labeled with a psychiatric or rheumatologic diagnosis and treated accordingly. But she's managing downstream effects while the inflammatory source—the implant—continues its work.
The clinical challenge: Breast implant illness has a very high misdiagnosis rate. Without asking about implants, without connecting the constellation of symptoms, you're missing what may be the key driver of the entire symptom picture.
By 2032, this population is projected to reach approximately 16 million women worldwide, underscoring the growing need for clinicians trained to recognize and manage implant related health concerns.
All breast implants are linked to rare but serious implant-associated malignancies—including breast implant–associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL), breast implant–associated squamous cell carcinoma (BIA-SCC), and other implant-associated lymphomas such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (BIA-DLBCL)—now formally recognized or acknowledged by regulatory agencies and the World Health Organization.