LEAD: France offers to pay for removing faulty breast implants

Dec 23, 2011, 12:38 GMT

Paris - France's Health Ministry recommended Friday that the 30,000 women who received the faulty PIP brand of breast implants be offered surgery to have them removed as a preventive measure and said the state will cover the cost.

Health Minister Xavier Bertrand stressed that the recommendation was 'not urgent in character' but that it should be proposed to all those who have the implant made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese, 'even without clinical signs of a deterioration of the implant.'

Bertrand said a task team of health experts had found there was 'no increased risk of cancer currently in women wearing the PIP brand compared with other implants.'

'The well-established risks linked to the implants are ruptures and the irritant powers of the gel that can lead to inflammation, making removal difficult,' he said in a statement.

The implants triggered a scare in France after a 53-year-old woman with the implants died of a rare form of breast lymphoma in November. It was later reported that another woman with the implants died of cancer in 2010.

In total, eight cases of cancer have been reported in women who have the implants, which were taken off the market in March 2010.

Bertrand said those with the implants should consult a surgeon.

The state will pay for the removal of the implants, the ministry said. The surgery costs on average 2,000 euros.

It will not, however, pay for the insertion of new implants, except for those women who received implants because they had one or both breasts removed after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Only about 20 per cent of women who have implants are estimated to fall into that category.

Junior Health Minister Nora Berra told BFM TV she hoped surgeons would implement 'reasonable tariffs' for the rest.

Worldwide, there are an estimated 300,000 wearers of PIP implants. Up to 40,000 British women are estimated to have the implants.

The British medical watchdog has said the implants pose no safety risk, but that concerned women should contact a surgeon or clinic.

PIP was liquidated after an investigation in 2010 found the company had been using a cheap industrial silicone in the implants and that they were more likely to tear and leak the gel into surrounding tissue.

Since then more than 500 French women have had the implants removed and more than 2,000 women have taken legal action. 'I don't want to keep two bombs in my body,' one woman told Liberation newspaper this week.