Breast Implant Removal in Korea — Umnagumo

Breast implant removal (explant surgery) at Umnagumo Plastic Surgery in Gangnam, Seoul (Korea) is a procedure to safely resolve cases where the implant is no longer wanted, or where the implant has caused complications such as pain, hardness, deformity, capsular contracture, rupture, or systemic symptoms that the patient associates with the implant. Whether the goal is full explant, explant with capsule management, explant with mastopexy, or explant with simultaneous fat-graft reconstruction, the operation is planned around the patient’s anatomy and their long-term preference, not a single default technique.

Implant removal is not simply extraction — it is a precision corrective process where capsule management (total capsulectomy, partial capsulectomy, en-bloc removal, or capsule preservation), residual tissue assessment, hemostasis, and reconstruction of the soft-tissue envelope are decided together at the planning stage. Cases involving contracture, calcification, silicone deposit, or chronic inflammation make capsule management more demanding, and future reconstruction or re-implantation options are also determined at this point — so the patient is not committed to decisions they have not yet made.

Removing the implant typically helps reduce discomfort, foreign-body sensation, and chest-wall pressure, and supports the return to a more natural breast shape. It is also an important step toward preventing further complications — such as silicone bleed, late seroma, or capsule-related inflammation — and maintaining healthy breast tissue for future imaging surveillance. We also discuss realistic expectations: how the breast will settle, what volume loss to expect, and whether mastopexy or fat-graft refinement should be combined.

At Umnagumo, every explant procedure is performed personally by a plastic surgeon with 25+ years of experience, in collaboration with board-certified anesthesiology specialists and under a comprehensive in-house safety-management system that covers preoperative clearance, intraoperative monitoring, and structured post-op care. Over 12,000 cumulative breast surgery cases inform precise capsule-condition assessment, tissue-preservation decisions, and contingency planning — so international patients travelling to Korea for explant receive the same depth of preoperative diagnosis, intraoperative judgment, and post-op support that domestic patients do (individual results may vary).