A consultant plastic surgeon has been urgently arranging consultations with 30 anxious Essex women who have had soya oil breast implants.

Before Trilucent breast implants were taken off the market in this country in March last year, about 5,000 women countrywide had received them.

They have now been told to have them removed because the oil has been found to seep into the body, causing a cancer risk.

However James Frame, who has carried out implants on women at the St Andrew's plastic surgery centre at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford and on private patients, said he received information from the Medical Devices Agency only after it had been publicised by the media.

He said: "I am extremely, extremely disappointed that these things are not handled better.

"As an expert, I am supposed to be a leader in the field and should be in a position to support my patients but at the moment I know as much as anyone else.

"I came into my NHS hospital finding a photocopy of something sent to managers and phoned the clinicians' helpline which had no more information. It is appalling."

Mr Frame said the implants were initially marketed boasting that, unlike other types, a mammogram could be carried out through them and that, if leakage did occur, it would be absorbed naturally through the gut.

He even waited two years to see their "track record" before using them for reconstructions in cancer patients and cosmetic purposes as they gave much better results than silicone.

He is now arranging two urgent clinics to see worried women.

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