Unconventional armour LockieCurrie/Getty

Who needs a bulletproof vest when you’ve got a bulletproof chest? Breast implants seem to provide some protection against gunshots, altering the speed and shape of bullets as they hit the body.

It has previously been claimed that breast implants have saved women from gunshots, stabbings, and even kangaroo attacks. To see if there’s any scientific credibility to this, Christopher Pannucci, a plastic surgeon at the University of Utah, and his colleagues have analysed bullets shot through breast implants into ballistics gel – a substance designed to mimic human tissue.

They used a handgun to fire shots at 300 metres per second into blocks of ballistics gel 2.5 metres away. When these blocks were placed underneath large saline breast implants, the distance the bullets travelled into the gel was reduced by an average of 8 centimetres, or 20 per cent.


Analysing the gel showed that the implants seemed to make the bullets become flatter and wider, increasing their drag force and slowing them down. This decelerating effect could mean the difference between life and death in some cases, says Pannucci. “But it would depend on the bullet velocity and the size and type of the implant,” he says.

Built-in airbags

The experiment was inspired by a case in which Pannuci treated a woman with breast implants who survived a close-range gunshot. The bullet entered through her nipple, passed through the implant, and exited near her armpit. “The entrance and exit wounds were not in a straight line, so we thought the implant must have caused the bullet to slow down and alter its trajectory,” he says.

The team used particularly large implants in their experiment, with a volume of 750 cubic centimetres. This woman, however, had smaller ones that were 390 cubic centimetres in volume.

Pannucci thinks implants may also protect the chest cavity in stabbings, falls or car accidents. “You can think of them as tiny airbags,” he says. Pannucci warns, however, not to intentionally put implants to the test.

Anand Deva at Macquarie University in Australia warns that breast implants can rupture on impact, causing serious problems, particularly in the case of silicone implants. He has treated two people with breast implants that have ruptured – one who was shot and one who fell down stairs.

“They had red, hard, painful breasts because silicone gel had spread all through and caused inflammation,” says Deva. “The gel is hard to get out because it leaks into all the nooks and crannies, and sometimes mastectomy is required.”

Deva says he wouldn’t recommend women get breast implants simply to protect themselves from injury. “It’s an interesting idea, but it would be a stretch to say they could replace bulletproof vests.”

Journal reference: Journal of Forensic Sciences, DOI: 10.1111/1556-4029.13589