By
Mail On Sunday Reporter
Last updated at 12:06 AM on 8th January 2012
More than half the women given PIP breast implants at an NHS hospital needed surgery after they ruptured.
The figure – 26 times higher than the official rupture rate – was reported to the Department of Health and has emerged despite an urgent Government safety review concluding there was not sufficient evidence to recommend removing the implants.
Doctors at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust had to remove the implants from seven women out of 13 who had received them over the past few years – a failure rate of 54 per cent.
Return visit: Patients attending University Hospital of Hartlepool needed further surgery after their implants ruptured
The figures are contained in a report prepared by NHS medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh which reveals several other private firms have suggested the implants could break far more frequently.
It raises further concern for the 40,000 women who have the implants, banned in the UK in 2010 after they were found to contain industrial-grade silicone intended for use in mattresses.
Official figures suggest only between one and two per cent of the silicone implants are likely to rupture.
Global scare: President of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), Jean-Claude Mas, holding one of his company’s products
Tim Goodacre, president of the British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, said: ‘It shows there may be an increased rate of rupture but we can’t say at what level with any certainty.’
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said last week that the 5,000 women who received PIPs on the NHS would be offered the option to have them removed on the Health Service.
David Emerton, medical director of North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust, confirmed it had removed about half the implants it had used.
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