Background: In January of 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a safety communication regarding the potential association between breast implants and anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (ALCL). In 2012, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, The Plastic Surgery Foundation, and the Food and Drug Administration signed a cooperative research and development agreement to develop the Patient Registry and Outcomes for Breast Implants and Anaplastic Large-Cell Lymphoma Etiology and Epidemiology (PROFILE) patient registry.
Method: This is an updated report of registry findings. From August of 2012 to August of 2020, 330 unique, suspected, or confirmed cases of breast implant-associated (BIA) ALCL in the United States were reported to PROFILE, including 144 cases newly reported since the 2018 publication.
Results: Median time from implantation of any device to BIA-ALCL diagnosis was 11 years (range, 2 to 44 years). At the time of presentation, 91% of cases had local symptoms and 9% had concurrent systemic symptoms. The most common local symptom was seroma, seen in 79% of patients. All patients had a history of a textured device; there were no patients who had a confirmed smooth-only device history. Approximately 11% of the reported cases were diagnosed with stage 1A disease (tumor-node-metastasis staging classification).
Conclusions: The PROFILE registry continues to be an essential tool in unifying the collection of granular-level data pertaining to BIA-ALCL. These data emphasize the critical importance of detailed tracking of BIA-ALCL cases, and will contribute significantly to our understanding of the relationship between breast implants and ALCL.
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