Ironically, PIP implants were banned in Brazil in April 2010 when problems were first reported, but 25,000 implants had already been performed in the country, according to ANVISA. Around 100,000 women get silicone breast implants in Brazil each year (including Americans). Silicon implants were banned in the U.S. for fourteen years until 2006 when the restrictions were lifted.

“The medical facts that we know suggest that these implants can rupture earlier and with a greater risk of inflammatory reaction,” said Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery president Jose Horacio Aboudib.

Aboudib said his group in Brazil recommended that women who received the implants get tested early to make sure the implants were viable.

Venezuela’s union of plastic surgeons agreed, declining to recommend that women with the PIP implants get them removed, recommending preventative checkups instead. About 40,000 breast augmentations are performed in Venezuela each year, and plastic surgery is widespread in a country that has produced regular top contenders for Miss Universe over the years.

Surgeon Juan Jorge Blanco noted that breast augmentations used to be prohibitively expensive but that costs have since dropped to $3,000-7,000. “Women from all social backgrounds now get operations,” he said.

Argentina’s ANMAT drugs authority urged 15,000 women who received implants to “consult” their doctors.

In Colombia, implants are sometimes offered as birthday gifts, especially for “quinceaneras”–girls’ 15-year-old birthdays–that mark a girl’s passage into young womanhood.

“Drug traffickers also offer the surgery as a gift to their girlfriends,” said surgeon Celio Bohorquez, spokesman of the Colombian Society of Plastic Surgery.

This cosmetic surgery scandal is multiplied exponentially by the hordes of women who have run to surgical enhancement over the last couple decades. It really put the practice into its massive perspective, as we see the scare affecting up to 300,000 women in over sixty countries.

My advice to the women of Latin America, and to tourists taking advantage of the rock-bottom prices of plastic surgery in foreign countries, be extra careful. Usually regulations are much more lax outside of the U.S. and Europe, and as I have said in this blog–any unproven and risky drug or procedure will find its way to South and Central America sooner or later by rogue practitioners or corporations ready to make a buck.

The surprise to me is in the brazenness PIP showed in its safety protocols and practices. I recommend that all women suspecting that they may have silicone breast implants manufactured by PIP to call their surgeon to discuss removal options and risks. Once again, my sympathies to any and all involved.