China's medical watchdog has asked patients having had breast implants from a now-defunct French company suspected of making implants reportedly linked to instances of cancer to go to hospital for checkups, despite the report saying that there have been no adverse reaction cases in China.

 About 400,000 implants made by the French firm Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), used in cosmetic surgery to enhance breast size, were sold worldwide before the company shut in 2010, when it was found to have used substandard, industrial-grade silicone gel.

According to the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) Wednesday, the administration has conducted an investigation on the sales situation of PIP implants in China along with PIP's Chinese agent, a technology company named Shenzhen Weienjie.

Until now, neither the National Adverse Drug Reaction Monitoring Center or Shenzhen Weienjie has received any reports of accidents from Chinese women who received the PIP implants, according to the notice.

"So far, we did not receive any customer complaints for PIP implants," Huang, an aftersales service agent for Shenzhen Weienjie, told the Global Times Wednesday. Huang refused to say whether the company is still selling PIP implants. Calls from the Global Times to the SFDA went unanswered Wednesday.

According to a SFDA notice, a conference to discuss breast implant safety was held in Beijing in December. After talks with medical experts, the SFDA advised all PIP implant receivers to receive full checks in hospital, and for any people whose implants ruptured to seek immediate medical treatment.

"We have never sold PIP implants to our customers," a staff member with Shanghai Ren-ai Hospital told the Global Times Wednesday. These comments were echoed by several other plastic surgery hospitals.

"Almost no PIP implants have been used in cosmetic surgery in China," Wang Lei, a plastic surgery expert, told the Global Times Wednesday. "I suggest people choose formal hospitals to have breast implants."

Luan Jie, head of breast surgery at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, said that PIP implants were approved for sale in China in October 2009, but were found to contain low-quality materials in March 2010 and subsequently banned, according to a previous Global Times report.

The silicone gel implants made by PIP, which shut its doors in 2010, appear to have an unusually high rupture rate and sparked an investigation in France into possible links to cancer in December.