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BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS AND HOW THE FEDS ARE TAKING NOTICE. >> I DECIDED TO GET BREAST IMPLANTS FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER I NURSED BOTH OF MY CHILDREN. >> 39-YEAR-OLD JACKIE SAYS SHE WANTED HER CONFIDENCE BACK. THAT'S WHY SHE MADE THE CHOICE. >> BODY IMAGE. YOU JUST HAD A COUPLE OF KIDS. YOU WANT TO FEEL BETTER, AND JUST DECIDED TO FINALLY DO IT AT 28. I THINK IS HOW OLD I WAS WHEN I FINALLY GOT IT DONE. >> THE MOTHER OF TWO FELT MORE SECURE AND HAPPY WITH HER BODY. >> THE FIRST TOO MANY I FELT FINE. I WAS PRETTY YOUNG. I'M A PRETTY HEALTHY PERSON. >> BUT NEARING 10 YEARS IT WAS TIME FOR A REPLACEMENT. >> I STARTED EXPERIENCING SYMPTOMS WITHIN SIX MONTHS OF GETTING THE SECOND SET. >> JACKIE BECAME EXTREMELY SICK BUT COULDN'T FIGURE OUT WHY. >> FOR A LONG TIME I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE MYSELF. I JUST FELT LIKE SOMETHING IS WRONG. >> SHE LIVED WITH THE SEVERE SYMPTOMS FOR FIVE YEARS. >> YOU JUST FEEL CONTAMINATED IS THE BEST WAY TO PUT IT. >> JACKIE HAD FOUR BREAST SURGERIES AND WORKED WITH SEVERAL DIFFERENT PLASTIC SURGEONS BUT IT WAS IN A FACEBOOK GROUP WHERE SHE HEARD BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS FOR THE FIRST TIME. >> IT'S WHERE I'VE GOTTEN THE MAJORITY, 99%, OF MY INFORMATION FROM. >> THOUSANDS OF WOMEN ACROSS THE COUNTRY ALSO CLAIMING THEIR BREAST IMPLANTS MADE THEM SICK, TOO. >> JUST HAVING THAT GROUP OF WOMEN TO TALK TO, WOMEN THAT BELIEVE IN BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS, WOMEN THAT ARE EXPERIENCING POTENTIALLY BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS AND ARE GOING THROUGH WHAT I'M GOING THROUGH HAS BEEN INVALUABLE. >> TOGETHER THEY ARE TRYING TO RAISE AWARENESS. >> IT'S SUCH A NEW THING AND A LOT OF DOCTORS DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT. THEY AREN'T EDUCATED ABOUT IT. SOME BELIEVE IN IT, SOME BELIEVE IN THE POTENTIAL AND SOME DON'T BELIEVE IN IT AT ALL. >> THEIR VOICE HAS REACHED F.D.A. THEIR VOICE PROMPTED A FEDERAL REVIEW. >> I SPOKE WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEMS PLASTIC SURGEON DR. RICHARD -- WHO SAYS EXTENSIVE RESEARCH IS BEING DONE. >> THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME WHEN WOMEN HAVE EXPRESSED OR PEOPLE HAVE EXPRESSED CONCERN ABOUT BREAST IMPLANTS, IT IS RELATED TO THE SILICON GEL TYPE AS OPPOSED TO THE SALINE TYPE. >> THE SAME SILICON GEL IMPLANTS JACKIE HAD BUT WHILE THERE ARE SIMILARITIES AMONG CASES SCIENTISTS STILL CAN'T PINPOINT A CAUSE. >> WHEN WE HAVE WOMEN WITH THOSE CONCERNS, I THINK WE DO ABSOLUTELY NEED TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY, BUT WE ALSO HAVE TO BE CAREFUL ABO ASCRIBING THE IMPLANT TO THE ILLNESS. >> THE DOCTOR SAYS SOME WOMEN HAVE FOUND RELIEF BY MOVING THE IMPLANTS WHICH JACKIE DID TWO WEEKS AGO. >> I JUST DON'T FEEL THAT CONTAMINATED FEELING ANYMORE. I FEEL LIKE I HAVE MORE ENERGY. I WANT TO GET OUT OF BED. I WANT TO GO AND DO THINGS. I FEEL LIKE MYSELF AGAIN. >> KNOWING FROM EXPERIENCE, JACKIE SAYS UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE PUTTING IN YOUR BODY. >> I'M ABSOLUTELY NOT HERE TO TELL YOU THAT YOU SHOULDN'T GET AN IMPLANT. JUST READ AND GET YOURSELF EDUCATED AND THEN MAKE A DECISION. >> IN OMAHA, KETV NEWS WATCH 7. >> WHILE THE F.D.A. WORKS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BREAST IMPLANTS AND ILLNESS THE AGENCY SAYS THERE IS A LINK TO A RARE FORM OF CANCER. >> IT'S CALLED ANAPLASTIC LARGE CELL LYMPHOMA. BOTH ISSUES WERE DISCUSSED IN A TWO-DAY HEARING. >> YOU CAN WATCH THE HEARING THROUGH A LINK. WE PUT IT ON THE H

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"I decided to get breast implants for the first time after I had both my children," Jacqui Jewett said. The 39-year-old said she had nursed both her children and wanted her confidence back.That's when she decided to get breast implants. "For any insecure mom going through all that stuff, it just feels like something you want to do, and everybody is doing it. It's, like, a huge trend to do it, and for me, it was about body image," Jewett said. "You know, you just had a couple of kids, you want to feel better and I just finally decided to do it. At 28 is when I finally decided to get it done."She said after her breast implant surgery in 2006, she felt more secure and happy with her body. "The first time, I felt fine. I was pretty young. I'm a pretty healthy person," Jewett said. She was a fitness competitor and because of that, she said she was more aware of her body. She worked out and ate healthy foods. Nearing 10 years of having the first set of breast implants, it was time for a replacement. Jewett got a second set in 2014. "I started experiencing symptoms within six months of getting the second set," she said. "My hair was falling out in clumps, my vision was deteriorating, I had ringing in my right ear all the time, gastrointestinal issues, tingling in my extremities -- those were probably the most aggressive symptoms that I was experiencing."As a cosmetologist and permanent makeup artist, Jewett began to notice her symptoms were affecting her work. "Brain fog. I couldn't remember dates or appointments. I was just really, really tired all the time. I went from 20/16 vision to wearing three times magnifiers to do my work," she said. Jewett became extremely sick but couldn't figure out why. "For a long time, I just didn't feel like myself at all. I just felt like something is wrong," she said. "I was diagnosed with cervical and vaginal cancer in November 2017, and I was cleared in June 2018. When I would tell my friends and family about my symptoms, they always said it was because my body was recuperating from the cancer. Some people even said it was because I was almost 40 and that's why my vision was going bad. A lot of it did make sense. I never assumed my breast implants were making me sick." She lived with her symptoms for five years. "You just feel contaminated, is the best way to put it," Jewett said. Jewett had four breast surgeries and worked with several different surgeons but, it was in a Facebook group where she heard the term, "breast implant illness" for the first time. "It is where I've gotten the majority, 99%, of my information from," Jewett said.Nearly 80,000 women are members of the Facebook group. Many claim their breast implants also made them sick, and Jewett no longer felt alone in her struggle."Just having that group of women to talk to, women that believe in breast implant illness, women that are potentially experiencing breast implant illness and are going through what I'm going through. It has been invaluable," Jewett said. New people are added to the group every day, and together, they are trying to raise awareness. "It's such a new thing. A lot of doctors don't know about it. They aren't educated about it. Some believe in it, some believe in the potential of it and some don't believe in it at all," Jewett said. But their voices did reach the Food and Drug Administration. Their reports prompted a federal review. KETV Newswatch 7 spoke with Dr. Richard Korentager, a plastic surgeon at the University of Kansas Health Systems. He said extensive research is being done. "The majority of the time, when women or people have expressed concerns about breast implants, it is related to the silicone gel type as opposed to the saline type," he said. Jewett had silicone gel implants. While there are similarities among cases, scientists still can't pinpoint a cause. "The symptoms that are often being described are similar in some ways but often are ill-defined. There's been a lot of work done trying to figure out if there are specific antibodies or very specific disease processes. Are there markers in the bloodstream that we can find that would explain to us why these things are happening,?" Korentager said. "We frankly have not been able to find any of those. Now, that is not to say that there are not some women who are experiencing these problems. When we have women with those concerns, I think we absolutely do need to take them seriously, but we also have to be careful about ascribing the implant to the illness."Korentager says some women have found relief by removing their implants. "I've treated quite a few women who present with concerns and removed the implant and the capsule surrounding the implant. In some cases, they feel improved or dramatically improved after the surgery. A significant number of those patients also afterwards say they aren't significantly improved, and in those cases, we may be looking at disease processes that aren't involved," he said. "The ones that do see improvement, I can't always medically explain why we see the improvement." Jewett had her implants removed April 12."I just don't feel that contaminated feeling anymore. I feel I have more energy, I want to get out of bed, I want to go and do things. I feel like myself again," she said. "There's some women who don't tolerate breast implants well. That could be because they get a lot of thick capsule, fiber tissue around the implant making the implant very hard," Korentager said. "There may very well be processes that we just don't understand. I think that it would be incorrect of any physician to think or believe that we understand everything, that we know it all. We don't. We are learning new things every day so I don't have a specific answer to say, 'This why this woman is feeling it whereas the vast majority are not feeling it,' but in the same token, I don't want to discount what these women are saying or feeling when it isn't feeling right."Korentager said the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery are committed to doing more research and collecting data, along with the FDA and breast implant companies. "We are committed to understanding everything, not just what has been described as breast implant illness, but everything related to breast implants," he said. "What's been looked at with more scrutiny recently over the past number of years is the association of ALCL, which is the large cell lymphoma of the fiber tissue, the capsule that surrounds the implant."ALCL is a rare type of cancer about 300 women have been diagnosed with. "It's something that is very unusual but it is definitely a disease entity that we are concerned about. We as plastic surgeons are collecting a tremendous amount of data about these cases, worldwide, not just within the United States," Korentager said. "The exact causative factors to the things that are causing women to develop this ALCL in the capsule tissue, we just don't know yet."He said there are some theories related to chronic irritation and said the implants associated with ALCL are textured types of implants. "A textured breast implant looks almost like it has sort of a pebbly type of surface. In some situations it will have a very fine kind of pebbling, other implants or manufacturers will have other sorts of a more aggressive or rougher sort of texture to it," Korentager said. "That's where some of the FDA recommendations or hearings have been looking at. Some of the recommendations and rules have come out in other countries around the world."There is still a lot of work to be done, and Korentager said as plastic surgeons, none of this is taken lightly. They want to do the safest and best procedures for patients. "There's always a balance between safety and trying to provide the most benefit and knowing that there are risks of complications," he said. But knowing from experience, Jewett wants to warn anyone considering breast implants. She said people should know what they are putting in their bodies. "I am absolutely not here to tell you that you should not get breast implants. Some people have had implants for 30 years, and they are fine. I would say to just educate yourself," she said. "When people tell me they want breast implants, I usually direct them to the Facebook group and I tell them to read everything. Get educated and then make a decision." Click here to watch the FDA's two-day meeting.