NICE calls for U.K. surgery ban on vaginal mesh implants

The infamous mesh implants that’s sewn into vagina walls which has reportedly caused multiple injuries and excruciating pain for many women may now be finally banned for good in the U.K.

Those women who had the ‘minor’ routine surgery to help treat organ prolapses and mild incontinence, but then went on to suffer serious and painful complications has prompted the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to recommend that the implants shouldn’t be used in treatment any more at all, only for research.

This is a change to previous NICE guidelines that were more about taking extreme precautions when using the mesh devices.

Organ prolapses can be uncomfortable and make it harder for women to control their bladders. The meshes are implanted to stop organs from dropping down and protruding into the vagina. However, the devices may be causing more harm than good, with multiple reports of the woven meshes cutting into the vagina, causing excruciating pain. Made from the same material as plastic bottles, the permanent implants can fuse with the patient’s flesh, making an extraction extremely difficult or completely impossible.

“Permanent pain, unable to walk, work or have sex.”

Complications from having the mesh has left some women virtually crippled and unable to get on with their lives. Margie Maguire is one of the women left unable to have children or walk unaided because of the damage caused by having the mesh implanted. She suffers from chronic pelvic pain every day and is on nine different medications.

Maguire has been to the hospital 53 times because of the mesh and has been told by a surgeon who examined her that she could see the mesh tap protruding through her vagina. The 41-year-old has reportedly given up her career as a child-minder because of the constant and intense pain.

NICE’s report said that there were “serious but well-recognised safety concerns” and that “evidence of long term efficacy is inadequate in quality and quantity.” The risk of incredible pain and complications simply aren’t worth having the procedure, some say.

The NHS Hospital Episodes Statistics says over 92,000 women have had the vaginal mesh implants between April 2007 and March 2015. The data also notes that around 1 in 11 women experience adverse problems, meaning over 8,000 women from that eight-year-period are suffering, or have suffered, complications.

University of Oxford professor, Carl Heneghan, said that NICE’s report and draft guidelines was an admission that the health services “got this wrong” and that the use of the mesh has been a “catastrophe”. Heneghan is reportedly outraged by how long it has taken for the dangers and problems the devices carry to be recognised, and for something to be done:

“Seven years I have been watching this emerge – it is absolutely farcical how bad it is. Either they’re burying their heads in the sand or they don’t know what they’re doing.”

One of the factors for the massive delay in recognising the harm the mesh implants have been causing is apparently that GPs and doctors were too dismissive of complaints brought by women who suffered complications.