Go back to the Europarl portal

Choisissez la langue de votre document :

 Index 
 Full text 
Verbatim report of proceedings
Thursday, 13 February 2003 - Strasbourg OJ edition

Breast implants
MPphoto
 
 

  Jöns (PSE).(DE) Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I too should like to thank Mrs Stihler very much for her excellent and, above all, important report.

Time and again, women complain about the damage suffered to their health following the use of breast implants or about operations that have had undesirable cosmetic results. Incidentally, 80% of breast implant operations are carried out for purely cosmetic reasons. The constant physical and emotional suffering caused by the implant operations is often immense. As a rule this ought to be avoidable, as the cause is not the implants per se. This has been confirmed in studies, and particularly impressively by the STOA study from the year 2000. The causes are more usually the implants not being fitted by specialists, the device not being replaced automatically after a few years and the continuing lack of regular medical aftercare, not to mention the fact that women are still not fully informed about the potential risks, which vary from case to case, before the operation. That is why there is an urgent need to impress on the Member States that they must finally ensure that women are fully informed before an operation of this kind and, above all, that they must stop a plethora of insufficiently qualified beauty surgeons from working by introducing additional qualification requirements and subjecting their clinics to more stringent inspections.

If we want to optimise quality assurance then this is the second step, now that we have already taken the first step, together with the Commission, of putting in place stricter product safety standards. I am thinking of the recent decision to reclassify breast implants as class 3 medical devices.

My group is also calling for an implant passport to be introduced, which would give information both about the characteristics of the implant and about the necessary post-operative care and would identify the surgeon. The passport should be signed by the doctor and the patient before the operation as a clear declaration of consent. In the light of the many complications that can arise after breast implant operations – which were brought to our attention not least by the petitions sent in by thousands of women in 1998 – I think it is quite frankly scandalous and completely incomprehensible that so far only one Member State has introduced a national implant register. It will come as no surprise either then to learn that at the moment we do not have either precise figures on the implant operations carried out or complete scientific findings based on the adverse effects suffered by the women. That is why it is of the utmost urgency to start setting up a national register for breast implants in all of the Member States immediately, and to join the international breast implant register.

In my view, this whole sorry tale also illustrates yet again why we urgently need multidisciplinary breast centres, in which benign and malignant diseases can be treated and beauty operations carried out under one roof, and where quality is guaranteed.

 
Legal notice - Privacy policy