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Ethicon Media Monitoring 8/02/2017
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Anguish of women who received ‘mesh’ treatment
Aug 1, 2017 | The Glamorgan Gem
By Tim Chapman
A Barry woman has told The GEM of the anguish and pain suffered by some patients who have received medical ‘mesh implants’. -
A mum's medical mesh has 'embedded itself in her stomach wall' and left her in agony
Jul 31, 2017 | Wales Online
By Mark Smith
A mum-of-three who had a medical mesh implanted into her stomach claims the device is “slowly killing” her and has left her in constant, crippling pain.
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Anguish of women who received ‘mesh’ treatment
Aug 1, 2017 | The Glamorgan Gem
By Tim Chapman
A Barry woman has told The GEM of the anguish and pain suffered by some patients who have received medical ‘mesh implants’.
Mrs Pauline Inch (60) says that some women who received the treatment suffered serious health problems and endured bouts of depression.
For many women suffering the distressing effects of stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, surgical procedures using vaginal mesh devices have provided an effective form of treatment which can be far less invasive than alternative surgical procedures. However, the safety and efficacy of surgery using mesh devices has been questioned by a community of patients and clinicians.
Mrs Inch attended a parliamentary meeting at Westminster on July 18 hosted by Owen Smith, the MP for Pontypridd, which was addressed by leading gynaecologists, urologists, and ‘Sling the Mesh’ campaigner Kath Sansom.
Pauline, who says she knows of sufferers in Barry and Bridgend, told The GEM: “The meeting in Parliament was chaired by Owen Smith and there was a panel of eminent surgeons.
“It was well attended by over 120 women from all over the country who had suffered from an implant at some time in their lives.
“We heard that incidents had been under-reported because staff were worried how it would reflect on them.
“We also heard that the old way of surgery had very little failures compared to the mesh method, but the mesh was deemed cheaper and more cost effective.
“Even that has not been really true because of the additional cost of medication to help affected patients through the painful life that they have to endure afterwards.”
Alternatives treatments can include using ‘bulking agents’ such as collagen, pessaries or tissue grafts.
One consultant urogynaecologist told the meeting that there is a better way of solving the problem.
Pauline said: “There always was, so why was it ignored? Only 40 per cent of surgeons reported their results to the authorities, so the problem was played down, and the plight of women victims rejected.
“These women had to suffer physical and mental pain while their bodies rejected the intruder inside of them.
“Some of the medication didn’t help their mental state, which was compounded by some of their GPs telling them that the pain was psychosomatic.”
Pauline said that during the Westminster meeting, some of the women were able to recount stories about how devastated their lives had been following treatment.
She said: “The women were allowed to voice their feelings, and for two hours we listened to the torture that these ladies had to endure.
“The stories told at that meeting left most in the room with tears in their eyes, men in the room openly crying while listening to the ordeals of some women. “One woman from north Wales told the assembled group that she was an outdoor person who regularly went walking in the mountains of Wales with her husband and daughter before her operation; now she is a wreck, unable to walk down to the high street to shop, let alone climb a mountain.
“When she first started to suffer from the symptoms of mesh, she was told that ‘it was all in her mind’, and just get on with her life.
“This lady doubted herself, and was twice put into care for mental issues; she also tried to kill herself to end the pain.
“Another told of the suffering experienced by the husbands and families of victims, it was not just the patient who suffered.
“Her husband was a ‘brick’ to her, and stood by her through the many years that she suffered.
“They hadn’t had sex for years due to the extreme pain that she was in.”
Pauline said a GP told the meeting that some colleagues had been ignorant of issues surrounding the mesh treatment and he was trying to educate them and surgeons on its failings. All GPs had been able to do was refer women back to specialists who had caused the problem in the first place.
Pauline says she herself suffers horrendous pain. “The top of my legs hurt, my groin feels as if it has barbed wire in there, and it’s as if someone’s put a hatchet in my lower back.”
When she spoke to one surgeon about removing her mesh, he told her: “There’s nothing that can be done. No surgeon would come near you.”
The problem is too complex. Pauline’s mesh is now embedded in her abdominal walls, part of her bowel and her organs.
She said she wanted to thank her Assembly Member Jane Hutt who had been a huge support throughout her ordeal.
Prior to the meeting, Owen Smith said: “In seven years of being an MP, this is one of the worst medical issues I have come across.
“I was first contacted by a constituent suffering from chronic pain as a result of the procedure, and since getting in touch with the ‘Sling the Mesh’ campaign I have been contacted by countless women who have shared their devastating stories following mesh surgery.
“It is my hope that the Government will take action to address this growing issue and immediately review mesh treatment.”
An NHS England Mesh Working Group report has been issued and Mr Smith said: “Mesh injured women will be deeply disappointed by the outcomes of the final NHS England Review, which seems to have made little progress since its interim report came out over a year ago.
“This was an opportunity for the NHS to take a lead and recommend a pause in the use of mesh until we know precisely how many women have been adversely affected by the product.
“Instead, they appear content to allow mesh to be widely used despite growing, international concerns about its potential ill effects.
“Many companies have already taken their mesh products off the market, that alone should tell us something is not right with these devices.”
The Mesh Oversight Group Report was published by NHS England last month.
It says: “This report sets out clear and achievable steps to improve the care of women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI) and pelvic organ prolapse (POP). “It is a direct and practical response to the serious issues raised by patients and the recommendations published in the interim report in 2015.
“It describes how improvements will be met in patient information and consent, shared decision-making, procedure recording and complication reporting as part of professional clinical practice.
“It also describes measures to address the knowledge level in general practice where the majority of initial consultations occur and patients may later present with complications.
“This report also has a particular focus on those women who have developed complications and their referral and access to self-declared specialist centres with multidisciplinary teams able to advise on and treat complications and post-operative problems.”
The report is available to see online at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mesh-oversight-group-report.pdf.
http://www.glamorgan-gem.co.uk/article.cfm?id=115037&headline=Anguish%20of%20women%20who%20received%20%E2%80%98mesh%E2%80%99%20treatment§ionIs=News&searchyear=2017
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A mum's medical mesh has 'embedded itself in her stomach wall' and left her in agony
Jul 31, 2017 | Wales Online
By Mark Smith
A mum-of-three who had a medical mesh implanted into her stomach claims the device is “slowly killing” her and has left her in constant, crippling pain.
Pauline Inch, from Barry , had the mesh inserted to support her stomach muscles after a routine operation to remove her gall bladder went “disastrously wrong”.
The 60-year-old said it is now “embedded” in her bowel, abdomen and surrounding organs – but she says no surgeon will attempt to remove it.
Medical mesh implants, made using synthetic plastics, are becoming increasingly controversial after being used to treat stomach and bowel conditions.
Some patients have complained that it feels like the mesh is cutting into them, that they suffer from incontinence, infections and bleeding.
Pauline said she now suffers excruciating pain in her feet, legs and back, is unable to walk long distances, and couldn’t even hold her newborn grandchild.
“I don’t feel like I’m a human being anymore,” she said.
“I can’t even look after myself because of what this mesh has done to me.
“It has robbed me of my life and my marriage.”
Pauline, who was a keen golfer, hiker and practised kung fu, had been married for just three months when she started getting pains in her stomach in 2000.
She was referred to the University Hospital Llandough (UHL) where surgeons carried out keyhole surgery to remove her gall bladder.
But Pauline says they removed the “Hartmann’s pouch”, which sits at the junction of the neck of the gall bladder, by mistake.
This led to her suffering a bile leak and contracting peritonitis, a life-threatening inflammation of the tissue that lines the inside of the abdomen.
“One moment I was having a routine operation and hours later I was fighting for my life,” she said.
“I was put on a machine that was breathing for me and I was drifting in and out of consciousness. It was horrible.
“While I was in intensive care I came around and I could not move or talk – I was screaming inside my own head.”
After making a good recovery and being discharged from Llandough, Pauline said she suffered a hernia “the size of a melon” where the operation had been carried out.
She said she then had an 8in mesh implanted into her by a Llandough surgeon to correct the hernia and help keep her stomach muscles in place.
But she claims the mesh “wrapped itself around her bowel” and needed to be removed and replaced.
“I felt all right for a while but then I could feel it ripping inside me,” she said.
“For a long time I hadn’t been able to eat properly – just things like salad.
“My stomach swelled so much at one point that I could put a cup and saucer on my stomach.
“People would come up to me and ask when my baby was due but I wasn’t pregnant.”
In 2003 doctors over the border in Plymouth inserted a second mesh made out of a form of plastic known as polypropylene.
But a decade later, in 2013, she claims the “new and improved” mesh had embedded itself into her stomach wall, part of her bowel, and surrounding organs.
She said she is now in so much pain that she has contemplated taking her own life.
“The pain in my leg, bottom and foot never goes away,” she added.
“The bottom of my back feel like it’s been attacked with a hatchet.”
She claims because the procedures were carried out so long ago the period of time to lodge an official complaint has passed.
“My life finished when I was 43,” she added.
“When my granddaughter came over from Australia I couldn’t hold her because I was in so much pain.”
Pauline, along with many other “mesh victims”, travelled to Parliament in July for a special meeting organised by Owen Smith MP.
The meeting, which also included medical professionals, mostly focused on women treated with transvaginal mesh (TVT) for organ prolapse and stress-related urinary incontinence.
Mr Smith said all-party mesh group will be set up after it was discovered that “many thousands” of women have been injured by the mesh.
He added: “The NHS should undertake a full audit and establish a registry to determine how many women have been adversely affected by mesh.
“And if the numbers are as high as some experts fear, perhaps as high as 20%, then mesh should be suspended pending a definitive judgement on its safety.”
n response, a spokesman from Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: “We acknowledge that Ms Inch has complained about surgery that was undertaken to insert mesh into her abdomen in a trust in England.
“Concerns were raised with the health board and due to her distress we have engaged with Ms Inch at every opportunity and directed her to raise any issues about her treatment and care with our concerns team.
“We have worked together with Ms Inch to resolve these issues on several occasions and Ms Inch has approached the Public Service Ombudsman on two occasions.
“We have undertaken two further surgical reviews of Ms Inch’s Health in recent years and advised, in line with clinical safety and sound clinical evidence, no further treatment is required based on the outcomes of these reviews.”
The Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust spokesman said: “We are extremely sorry to hear that Mrs Inch is experiencing problems.
“We had not previously been contacted regarding any issues but, after speaking with Mrs Inch today, our Patient Advice and Liaison Service are going to assist by initiating further investigation into her concerns.”
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/mums-medical-mesh-embedded-itself-13411672
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