Letters

From the February 1996 issue

Connie Chung Syndrome

Thank you for Michael Fumento's "A Con-federacy of Boobs" (October) concerning breast augmentation. I was performing between 120 and 150 breast augmentations each year until Connie Chung's
program about their alleged hazards. I dropped to zero breast augmentations the following year. The number of breast augmentations is coming back slowly, but now we're using the saline implant, which has some inherent problems that were not found in the silicone-gel implants.

In my career, I've performed in excess of 2,000 breast augmentation operations. No other operation resulted in the same percentage of patient satisfaction. The horror stories which became so abundant following Connie Chung's program have not occurred in my practice, nor in the practice of those with whom I'm familiar. We began referring to the panic-stricken patients who called following Connie's program as suffering from Connie Chung Syndrome.

James Michael Bestler, M.D.
Martinsville, VA