A planned class action against the distributor of imported faulty breast implants has been dropped.

More than 1,000 Australian women who received the implants made by French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) joined the lawsuit after concerns about their high rate of rupture.

Adelaide law firm Tindall Gask Bentley says distributor Medical Vision Australia had limited product liability insurance, making class action unviable.

Lawyers say they will now investigate the possibility of other defendants.

The firm says testing has confirmed the implants are at least two to six times more likely to rupture than other brands.

Partner Tim White says the firm had been investigating the claim since December 2011.

"There is no requirement for a company to hand over details in relation to its insurance cover or the policies themselves," he said.

"We were fortunate that the insurer by consent handed this information over to us very recently otherwise we might have been months into the litigation and still not aware of this problem."

A woman affected says she is disappointed and angry that the company cannot be pursued.

Rayner, 27, had silicon leak into her lymphatic system when one of her implants ruptured.

"I've experienced a lot of costs. $25,000 in surgery alone. That doesn't count all the times that I've had to have off of work but also I want them to be accountable for what they've done," she said.

"It's not just about costs. It's being accountable to what they've done to all these women."

Another patient, Tarnya Walker, paid almost $5,000 to have her PIP implants removed.

"I had to sacrifice absolutely everything," she said.

"And being a single mother with two kids that wasn't easy, but I knew the only important thing was getting them out."

Ms Walker got the implants removed last year. Two years previously, she had to have her gall bladder removed.

She says complications from both surgeries have left her unable to work and she now lives with her two children in a boarding house.

"The money that I was earning was enough to survive. But being sick and then sort of having to pay for the operation, I have nothing left now because it's all gone," she said.

"That literally has put me in a situation where I'm homeless. With Centrelink I'm technically homeless."

'Incomprehensible'

Independent senator Nick Xenophon says it beggars belief that the company was not required to have a higher level of insurance.

"This French company has gone bankrupt. Their CEO was under house arrest. You have the Australian company in liquidation and now we find out that there is no adequate insurance cover for these women," he said.

"You can't practice medicine in Australia without insurance, so why is it that medical devices implanted in our bodies don't require that protection for consumers? This needs to be the subject of legislative reform.

"It is just incomprehensible that medical devices implanted in the bodies of Australians, the manufacturers, the distributors aren't required to have any form of adequate insurance to cover consumers whose lives can be ruined as a result of those devices going wrong.

"They have industrial grade silicone in them which is another issue as to how on Earth did they get approved in the first place.

"The Food and Drug Administration in the US took a tougher approach on these implants, much tougher than our regulator.

"I've spoken to a number of women affected by the PIP implants. They are devastated that they are now going to be out of pocket in the tens of thousands of dollars in some cases for the surgery to fix up the mess created by these defective implants."

The French silicone gel implants were recalled in Australia by the Therapeutic Goods Administration in 2010 after medical authorities in France raised concerns.

Last year, a report by the UK's National Health Service found the implants did not pose a significant health risk but did rupture more frequently than other products.