A Woman Swallows Her Breast Implant During Pilates?
I know pilates does incredible things for your flexibility . . . so even though this story is pretty messed up, maybe they should put it on the marketing posters: A 59-year-old woman in Baltimore SWALLOWED HER BREAST IMPLANT during pilates.
The woman's name wasn't released. Her case was just published in the "New England Journal of Medicine".
Now...to clarify, the doctors say she didn't swallow it in the traditional way, like down her throat. But it was the same basic principle.
The woman was doing a technique called the Valsalva maneuver. That's an exercise where you take a deep breath, hold it, and simulate the act of breathing out heavily. So, breathing out aggressively without releasing breath.
And it increases the pressure in your chest a LOT. So the woman built up enough pressure for her body to SWALLOW her right implant out of its socket, through the tissue between her ribs, and into the space between her lungs. (!!!)
Experts say it's a freak occurrence . . . the woman had recently had surgery to repair the mitral valve in her heart, which involves separating the muscles between the ribs. So she was primed to have her body swallow her implant.
Amazingly, when she went to the hospital and told them her implant had disappeared, she didn't have ANY side effects. No shortness of breath, no chest pain, nothing.
Surgeons tracked down the implant and put it back in her breast.
