Study: Breast Implants lead to Higher Suicide risk

Women who get cosmetic breast implants are thrice as likely as other women to commit suicide, suggests a recent research published in the August issue of the Annals of Plastic Surgery.

Women who are unhappy with their breast size undergo cosmetic breast implant surgery to enhance them and this treatment is gaining popularity worldwide. The study supports earlier researches that have revealed that such women have higher suicide risks.

The study researchers of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and the Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Tennessee did an exhaustive follow up of an earlier study of 3,527 women in Sweden who underwent cosmetic breast implant surgery between 1965 and 1993. They consulted death certificates to examine causes of death among women with breast implants.

It was found that there were 175 deaths overall among women with breast implants compared with an expected 133. Based on the 24 suicides after an average of 19 years, the rate of suicides turned out to be three times higher than the average population.

Women, who received them after 45, had nearly seven times higher risk of suicide, (average age of breast implant surgery was 32). There was a similar increase in deaths from alcohol or drug dependence among this group.

“Such findings warrant increased screening, counseling and perhaps post-implant monitoring of women seeking cosmetic breast implants,” said Loren Lipworth, an epidemiologist with the Tennessee school who led the research.

The increased suicide risk was not apparent until 10 years after implantation surgery, after which, however, suicide risk rose with time since surgery.

Lipworth said she believes that some women who get implants may have psychiatric problems perhaps linked with lower self-esteem or body image disorders.

"Thus, at least 38 deaths (22 percent of all deaths) in this implant cohort were associated with suicide, psychological disorders and/or drug and alcohol abuse/dependence," the researchers wrote.