Dr. Nicolaidis completed medical school as well as residency training in Plastic Surgery at McGill University. Following fellowships at both University of Miami and Baylor College of Medicine, he accepted a position at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, where he was recognized as one of “America’s top surgeons” in 2000. Board certified in both Canada and the United States, Dr. Nicolaidis decided to return to Montreal in 2002 following the events of 9/11. He has since worked as an Assistant Professor of Surgery at University of Montreal, where he continues to work part-time at Centre Hospitalier de l’Universite de Montreal (CHUM). The CHUM is a designated quaternary level care center for the province of Quebec; here, Dr. Nicolaidis’ focus is complex reconstruction following cancer resection. One of his proudest recent achievements was to receive the prestigious Jean Paul Bosse Professor of the Year award in 2016.
Dr. Nicolaidis began explanting somewhat fortuitously in 2018 at the request of one of his own young breast augmentation patients who had no complications nor BII; rather, she simply no longer wanted implants in her body. Subsequently, patients with BII began to present to the office for explantation. Not knowing much about BII, Dr. Nicolaidis reluctantly obliged. As more and more patients returned after surgery with either improvement or resolution of symptoms, Dr. Nicolaidis naturally became motivated to learn more about BII.
For a period just over two years, Dr. Nicolaidis was both explanting and implanting patients, much to the upset of several BII patients. Following discussions with and presentations by various “BII experts”, Dr. Nicolaidis became interested in why some women would develop BII while others would not. In other words, he wanted to clarify these “risk factors” for BII, for example history of autoimmune disease or severe allergies. In the Spring of 2021, as Dr. Nicolaidis was seeing more patients for explantation of implants than for augmentation, he began to meet patients who had developed BII even though they had no clear risk factors. He therefore could no longer predict which patients could receive breast implants without developing problems. At this point, Dr. Nicolaidis became concerned that he could be harming ANY patient by implanting breasts. For these reasons, Dr. Nicolaidis stopped using breast implants in May 2021.
Dr. Nicolaidis presented “Prospective Study of 182 Patients Undergoing Capsulectomy for BII: Three Reasons to do Capsulectomies for BII Patients” at the American Society of Plastic Surgery (ASPS) meeting in October 2020, followed by the Breast Implant Health Summit. Having reached 500 explants in January 2022, Dr. Nicolaidis now explants patients from across the country. Given that 20-30 % of explant patients now come from outside of Montreal, there has been a push to create an “Explant Center” with easier accommodations and more available care. To this end, we acquired a small bed and breakfast in downtown Montreal where patients can stay for brief periods.
