Not cosmetic: How a breast implant saved a life

Mary Lara never expected that a breast implant — something typically associated with cosmetic surgery — would be the key to saving her life. But after the removal of her lung and a car accident caused her heart to shift into a dangerous position inside her chest, a team of Baylor Medicine doctors turned to a highly unusual and innovative solution to restore her ability to breathe.

A lifetime of breathing problems

Lara had always struggled with bronchitis, pneumonia and occasional episodes of coughing up blood. It wasn’t until much later in life that doctors discovered she had a rare condition called pulmonary vein atresia, which usually shows up and is treated in infancy. By the time she saw Dr. R. Taylor Ripley, thoracic surgeon at Baylor Medicine, tests showed that only 6% of her blood flow was going to her right lung.

Ripley, professor of surgery in the David J. Sugarbaker Division of Thoracic Surgery, and the team initially hoped to repair the connection between Lara’s heart and right lung. However, the damage was too extensive to fix. Even if the connection had been restored, the lung itself was beyond saving and ultimately had to be removed.

In April 2024, Ripley performed a pneumonectomy, removing the lung and trying to reconstruct the space between her heart and lung to allow her chest to function normally. The recovery was challenging, but Lara was hopeful.

A devastating accident

Just six weeks after recovering from lung surgery, Lara was involved in a serious car accident. A driver ran a red light and struck her vehicle, breaking her back in four places. She required spinal fusion surgery and was left with a fractured sternum.

More alarmingly, the trauma from the crash caused her heart to shift into the empty space where her lung had been. In some cases, this doesn’t cause issues, but for Lara, the shift caused compression of her left main bronchus, the main airway to her only remaining lung, over the major artery in her chest called the  aorta. Her airway began to collapse, and she found herself struggling to breathe more and more each day.

A creative, life-saving plan

Desperate for answers, Lara returned to Ripley, who moved quickly to coordinate care. After scans and visits with specialists, the team determined that  her airway was dangerously collapsed. Stenting wasn’t a viable option because it would only provide temporary relief and could erode, which would be fatal.

That’s when the care team proposed a very rare solution: moving her heart back to the middle and filling the space in her chest with a sterilized breast implant to keep the heart and remaining lung in the proper position and relieve pressure on the airway.

“This is something you might read about in textbooks, but it’s extremely rare to actually perform,” Ripley said.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Sebastian Winocour selected and carefully place a 800-milliliter implant — a large, silicone medical-grade breast implant — into her chest cavity. It had to be perfectly sized and shaped to safely support her heart without damaging surrounding tissues.

Trusting her team

Although no one on her surgical team had ever performed this exact procedure, Lara never hesitated.

“To me, it didn’t seem that difficult. I trusted them,” she said. “They’re incredible doctors who do their research. They were confident and made me feel comfortable.”

She underwent the procedure in August 2024. It worked. The implant pushed her heart back into a stable position, relieved the pressure on her airway and allowed her to breathe again.

5K with only one lung

Lara’s journey didn’t end with surgery. She enrolled in pulmonary rehabilitation, where she learned exercises to strengthen her remaining lung. She continues these exercises daily to protect her long-term lung function.

Even more inspiring, Lara ran a 5K in April to mark the one-year anniversary of her pneumonectomy and plans on doing one annually. She’s never been a runner, but when a doctor once told her she’d never run, she made it her mission to prove him wrong.

Now back to working in her warehouse, spending time with her children and fiancé and breathing easier, Lara is grateful for the expertise and creativity of her Baylor team.

“They saved my life,” she said. “And they gave me my breath back.”

By the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery