A recent study published in the International Journal of Cancer, examining 2,800 Danish women found there to be no increased risk for developing breast cancer with silicone implants. The study followed the women for up to 30 years and included participants who had received silicone implants between the years of 1973 and 1995.

Surprisingly, these women displayed a 30 percent lower frequency of breast cancer than the non-implant receiving control group, which contained 1,736 women.

“Our current results support the conclusions of recent expert review committees that silicone breast implants are not associated with an excess risk of breast or other cancers,” commented Dr. Soren Friis, researcher at the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen.

The researchers believe that the reason for the lower incidence of breast cancer in silicone implant patients may be due to the type of patients that seek breast implants. Typically, women who undergo breast augmentation surgery to enhance their breast size are thinner and also have had more children, two factors that have been correlated with a decreased risk for breast cancer, according to the researchers.

Women who were diagnosed with breast cancer and had silicone implants were also not found to have had any delay in the detection of the breast cancer, in comparison with women who had no implants.

The study contradicts evidence found in research preformed on animals suggesting the carcinogenic effects of silicone, and is also one of the few studies to examine the long-term effects of breast implants on women.

The downside: Women with breast implants were found to have a higher rate of non-melanoma skin cancer in comparison with the implant-free group of women. However, researchers believe that these findings may be due to increased sun exposure among the women and not the silicone implant.

The study concluded that, “further studies of the effects of silicone breast implants on breast cancer detection and survival may be warranted.”

To learn more about breast implants, you may wish to speak with a board certified plastic surgeon who can inform you of the benefits and risks associated with the procedure.