Gold Coast is ground zero for medical mystery plaguing women
TV host Andi Lew says she was dying from her breast implants - but no one believed her. Now she’s warning the women of her hometown not to opt for the op.
The Gold Coast is becoming ground zero for a new medical mystery plaguing women. And high-profile TV host, author and podcaster Andi Lew, is warning the women of her hometown to beware their breast implants.
Despite being ignored and ‘gaslit’ by six specialists, the La-based and Gold Coastborn and bred mother recently returned down under to have explant surgery – and says she has never felt better.
She joins a growing number of Gold Coasters opting to have their implants removed due to health issues – from model Shannon Hottes, to wellness influencer Georgie Stevenson to locals Ashleigh Phelan, Michele Atherton and Sarah Hyde, who all shared their concerning stories to media. In fact, boob job regret is a growing phenomenon, with explant procedures booming by six-fold over the last decade, with almost 5000 removals in 2021 compared to 762 in 2011.
However, according to the Australian Breast Device Registry, an estimated 20,000 women still undergo breast augmentation surgery every year in Australia, many of them occurring here on the Gold Coast, the country’s boob job capital. But Andi has an urgent message for anyone considering the op: don’t do it.
She warns that while most procedures won’t produce a problem, help is hard to find when things go wrong – and even tougher to afford.
In fact, she says one of her most difficult hurdles was simply convincing the medical fraternity that there was any problem at all. Six doctors told her there was nothing wrong, despite explant surgery ultimately revealing one of her implants had ruptured.
The 49-year-old originally had the breast augmentation surgery eight years ago, but in recent years says she began experiencing what is termed Breast Implant Illness (BII), suffering hair loss, shortness of breath, anxiety and gut and digestive issues.
While some tests showed a ‘stage two’ contracture, meaning the implant was being rejected, doctors in both Australia and the US told her there was no rupture.
As a result, she was forced to access her superannuation in order to pay $14,000 for the procedure in Australia, a ‘bargain’ compared to what she would have paid in the US.
“Because the rupture had not been detected, I wasn’t covered by Medicare,” says Andi, who present the Well to Do podcast and is currently working on her tenth book.
“Even paying privately, it was still cheaper to do this op in Australia – even paying for two return airfares for myself and my son. I just want to warn other women to listen to their intuition, to listen to their bodies.
“For me, even though I was excited about life when symptoms started kicking in, I felt like I wanted to die … and I was dying. All my organs had started to shut down and weren’t working like they should.
“Medicine is not perfect and I know I’m not the only one who has suffered. I also know I’m not the only one who has been ignored.”
Part of the problem is that there is no official medical diagnosis for BII, which is a collection of symptoms that occur in people with breast implants such as fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, dry eyes and many other health concerns. Healthcare providers most often diagnose BII by ruling out other health conditions.
However, in the US the illness is gaining greater understanding and traction, with the National Centre for Health Research predicting it will soon be officially recognised.
In October 2021, the US Food and Drug Authority began requiring breast implant manufacturers to include information about the risk of symptoms that affect the whole body in a boxed warning on breast implant packaging and in a patient decision checklist included in patient information booklets.
But in Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the equivalent of the FDA, states only that women should discuss concerns with their health practitioner.
While the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons states: “Rarely, women with implants have reported general symptoms, including joint pain, general aching, swollen lymph glands, unusual tiredness, greater frequency of colds and flu, hair loss, rash, headaches, poor memory, nausea, muscle weakness, irritable bowel syndrome and fever. The relationship of these symptoms to auto-immune disorders has been suggested but not proven.”
For Andi, it’s simply not enough information for women to make an educated decision.
“They want you to discuss concerns with your health practitioner – the same person who gets paid if you have the surgery,” she says.
“There is a long history of gender bias in medicine and BII is another perfect example.
This is an illness that doesn’t affect men so it gets ignored.
“Within days of undergoing the en bloc capsulectomy, which removes the implant and the surrounding capsule all as one, my inflammation
wan“
I felt like I ted to die … and I was dying. All my organs had started to shut down.
Andi Lew
was gone and I felt vital again,” Andi said. “I’ve kept my implants, to me, they are my criminal evidence.”
In fact, Andi says she only discovered after the surgery that the manufacturer of her implants was forced to close in 2016. Her own surgeon, Professor Anand Deva, head of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Macquarie University, agrees more work needs to be done to ensure all patients are aware of the risks of breast augmentation, including the certain need for future surgeries, and that explants are becoming increasingly popular both in Australia and overseas.
Professor Deva has also been conducting his own research into BII, which he says is now being re-termed as Systemic Symptoms with Breast Implants (SSBI).
Andi says the traumatic experience of living with BII is often compounded by public criticism of those who opted for breast implants.
As a wellness coach, she says her own decision to have implants was triggered by a sexual assault trauma history in her childhood and was a way in which she believed she would feel safe in her adult body, describing her implants as a form of ‘armour’.
But she says she was also influenced by her life here on the Gold Coast, where she attended both primary and secondary school before working at Camp Eden, Movie World and Dreamworld.
“When you grow up on the Gold Coast, part of your education is how to look in a bikini,” she says.
“I grew up watching the Meter Maids. No one had fake boobs then but you knew you had to have boobs to be a maid … it was that constant subconscious idea that blonde hair and big boobs were what
you needed to be ‘beautiful’.
“While my decision to have implants was not triggered by aesthetics, for many women it is. And they are punished for that. BII support groups are targeted by hate, people say why should they pay to undo someone’s ‘vain’ decision. But these women were not aware of the risks when they chose to have the procedure, so why punish them?
“I think it’s also important to think about why women get breast augmentation. We need to drill down on the real reasons why we say it will make us feel or look better. If we say it’s to look or feel sexier or more beautiful … according to whom? Why are we suffering to conform to one idea, which is not necessarily our own?”
Andi says the medical fraternity must also take some ownership in selling a business to their patients.
She says when she first explored explant surgery, four out of six surgeons tried to ‘up-sell’ other procedures, a practice she says is common in the cosmetic and plastic surgery industries.
“One of the surgeons who does explants and readily recognises the risks of implants says he’ll only stop performing breast augmentations when explants make him as much as implants,” she says.
“Where is the duty of care there? Another surgeon told me I was going to look saggy so I should get a ‘lollipop lift’ when the implants were removed. But that’s just more surgery, more trauma from the body. Women should be encouraged to feel okay about scars and to know they are more than their looks.”
While Andi is now happily adjusting to her new body back in LA, where her career continues to soar, she says she wants to ensure that her ‘sisters’ on the Gold Coast are supported when it comes to making decisions about their bodies.
“I come back regularly, my mother is still there and lots of other family. I visited just before my surgery this year,” she says.
“The Gold Coast has changed a lot, and for the better. But that beach-andbikini lifestyle hasn’t changed, and I worry for the new generation of girls being subjected to that pressure.
“Ultimately it is their body, but we owe it to them that they have all the facts. And that we listen when they’re hurting.”