The Food and Drug Administration decided to continue to allow U.S. sales of textured breast implants, which have been identified as the cause of a rare but significant cancer, breast implant–associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma.
Mitchel L. Zoler/MDedge News
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee began 2 days of hearings on breast implants on March 25, 2019, in Silver Spring, Md.
A statement the agency released on May 2 said “The FDA does not believe that, on the basis of available data and information, the device [textured implants] meets the banning standard set forth in the Federal Food and Drug Cosmetic Act.” roughly half of them in the United States.
In coming to this decision, following 2 days of public testimony and discussions by an advisory committee in late March, the FDA is bucking the path taken by regulatory bodies of the European Union as well as several other counties. The EU acted in December 2018 to produce the equivalent of a ban on sales of textured breast implants marketed by Allergan. Then in April 2019, the French drug and device regulatory agency expanded this ban to textured breast implants sold by five other companies.
During the FDA advisory committee meeting in March, one of the world’s experts on BIA-ALCL, Mark W. Clemens, MD, a plastic surgeon at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said that of about 500 case reports received by the FDA, not one had involved a confirmed and “pure” episode of BIA-ALCL linked with a smooth breast implant. A team of experts recently reached the same conclusion when reviewing the reported worldwide incidence of BIA-ALCL in a published review (Plast Reconstr Surg. 2019 March;143[3S]:30S-40S).
Despite these reports, the FDA said in its new statement that “While the majority of women who develop BIA-ALCL have had textured implants, there are known cases in women with smooth-surface breast implants, and many reports do not include the surface texture of the implant at the time of diagnosis.” The agency added that it is “focused on strengthening the evidence generated to help inform future regulatory action.” During the March advisory committee meeting, some members of the panel spoke against a marketing ban on textured implants for reasons such as the modest number of reported cases and because of the importance of having a textured implant option available.