Size D Breast Implants Saved Woman From Bullet: Doc

Bullet fragments slowed by implant missed Lydia Carranza's heart
By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 25, 2010 9:51 AM CST
Size D Breast Implants Saved Woman From Bullet: Doc
A shell inspector is shown at work at Mentor Corp., a breast implant manufacturing facility, in Irving, Texas.   (AP Photo)

A woman shot point blank in the chest during a California shooting spree last summer may have survived thanks to less than natural means: her size D breast implants. That’s the contention of Lydia Carranza’s plastic surgeon, who hopes the unlikely story will spur implant suppliers to donate materials for her reconstructive surgery. “The bullet fragments were millimeters from her heart and vital organs,” he tells the Los Angeles Times.

“Had she not had the implant, she might not be alive today,” the doctor continues. Carranza was shot by a gunman who came to her workplace to murder his wife in July, and has had to wait to repair scarring and deflation in her right breast. An expert warily agrees with the doctor’s theory. “I don’t want to say a boob job is the equivalent of a bulletproof vest,” the LAPD veteran says, but “common sense would dictate” that the implant interfered with the bullet. (More Lydia Carranza stories.)

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