I just wanted to chime in here to dispell what I consider misinformation about the safety of goretex and its history of use as an implant for rhinoplasty.
Fact #1: Goretex has been used in the human body as early as 1971 - that's 36 years of history as an implantable material in the human body. It was mainly used for vascular surgery (to replace blood vessels). So in that regard, goretex has a long history of safety.
See http://www.emedicine.com/ent/topic376.htm
Fact #2: Although Dr. Jung and Dr. Chuang have only been using goretex for the last 6-7 years , it's actually been used for nasal augmentation for at least 10 to probably 18 years. A 10-year medical study of 309 patients who underwent nasal augmentation with goretex was published in 1999. The results showed a 1% infection rate for primary rhinos and a 5% infection rate for revision rhinos (vs. 3% for silicone). Since the study was published in 1999, you can infer that the actual surgeries took place around 1989 - that's 18 years of history as a nasal implant.
See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... s=10937089
Although goretex has been used as a nasal implant for almost 20 years, it hasn't come into widespread use until the last decade. In my opinion, that's because any new surgical discovery or technique takes a while to be widely adopted and accepted in the medical community. In that regard, Asia, especially Korea, has taken the lead with adopting goretex, but the US is slowly following suit. Several episodes of Dr. 90210 show high-priced Beverly Hills plastic surgeons using goretex for nasal augmention. Dr. Samuel Lam of Texas uses goretex exclusively for rhinoplasty, and explains his reasons for doing so on his Web site. He's written textbooks on the subject. See http://www.lamfacialplastics.com
I've yet to encounter a doctor in Korea, Taiwan, or the US who say that the implant (silicone or goretex) needs to be replaced down the road; it's meant to last a lifetime, so some of the comments in this forum that a certain implant type can only last so long aren't based on facts. And I want to give some comfort to those us of who have undergone the pain and expense of having rhinoplasty (with silicone or goretex) from being scared or regretting the decision they've made.
The gist of all this research is this: goretex has the edge on safety over silicone with regard to infection, extrusion, shifting, calcification, and shrinkwrapping, but silicone is the safer implant for removal or revision rhino. In the end, the decision of implant type is a personal choice for which criteria is more important to you.
