In a bit of news of the weird…although good…Lydia Carranza, a Simi Valley, California dental assistant who underwent a breast enlargement procedure and had silicone breast implants inserted, averted death at the hands of a gunman that opened fire at her office.
Her co-worker, and the gunman’s wife was unfortunately killed but Carranza survived a gunshot wound to the chest because her silicone breast implants were able to stop the bullet. She was however left with a scar and deflated implant.
In a statement to the LA Times, Dr. Ashkan Ghavami says “she’s just one lucky woman. I saw the CT scan. The bullet fragments were millimeters from her heart and her vital organs. Had she not had the implant, she might not be alive today.”
Ghavami says he will reconstruct Lydia’s implant at a reduced cost and appealed to implant companies to donate supplies.
Doctors at the hospital who treated Lydia say the incident is more of a ballistics issue than a medical one. Kris Carraway, spokesman for the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks says “The emergency physician who treated the patient was not aware of the breast implant having any impact or whether or not it saved her life.”
The LA Times also spoke with a firearms instructor at the local police department. He says it is theoretically possible for a silicone breast implant to stop a bullet but that it’s not a sure thing. He urges women not to get breast implants for a bullet proof vest.
We agree, that’s not a good reason to get breast implants…but it’s nice to see how they can give someone a new lease on life in its truest form.