VICTIMS LONG WAIT FOR SURGERY TO REMOVE FAULTY IMPLANTS
SEVEN years ago, Corinda Daw, 53, underwent an operation for mild incontinence using TVT, a procedure her surgeon said would take 20 minutes and work for ever.
Instead, the married motherof-two was left in agony, unable to urinate and with her sex life destroyed as the tape ‘strangled’ her insides and migrated into her bladder.
Corinda had to wait 16 months just to join a waiting list to have the mesh removed.
According to one expert in Britain, it will take about 20 years to clear the waiting list of women who need the surgery.
Trapped in pain, Corinda could endure no more and, last August, she used her husband’s pension to pay for private surgery to remove it.
Corinda, a sales consultant, had been referred for the TVT surgery after seeing her GP about the mild incontinence when sneezing and coughing.
The urological surgeon she was sent to said she was a perfect candidate for a TVT. ‘But as soon as the operation
was over, I found I could not pass urine,’ says Corinda, who had to use a catheter. ‘I was in agony from pelvic pain.
‘It was five months before I could pass water naturally. But it has never been right.’
Her sex life also suffered. ‘I had no pleasure sensation, only pains like a chronic urinary infection,’ she says.
She had no idea what was behind her symptoms until three years ago, when her husband Martyn, a harbourmaster, read a feature on mesh injury in the Mail. ‘He thought, “That sounds like my missus”. ‘I read it and thought the same, so I went to a new GP and asked for a mesh removal operation.’
It took ten months to get to see a consultant who told her to expect a wait of another three months for an operation date.
But no appointment came. Corinda’s recently retired husband then suggested sacrificing his pension pot for a private mesh-removal op.
The public waiting list has driven many women into private surgery, says Sohier Elneil, a consultant urogynaecologist. ‘I have known women to take second mortgages or cancel holidays of a lifetime to fund ops,’ she says.
Corinda underwent the threehour surgery, at a cost of £10,000 (€12,000). The surgeon found the mesh had attached itself to the inside of Corinda’s groin and migrated into her bladder. ‘There was 27cm of the stuff strangling my organs,’ she says. ‘The surgeon said it would have caused more damage over time. Three days after the op, I cried with relief. The pain had disappeared and I could pass water easily.’ But Corinda fears her sex life will never recover: ‘The mesh took away the feelings a woman should have, a cruel price to pay for treatment for mild incontinence.’