ACC rejects more mesh pain cases
Excruciating pain from a surgical mesh complication left Joachim Spod without a job and contemplating suicide – but ACC says it cannot compensate him.
The 50-year-old father-of-three, known as Jo, is one of a growing number of patients injured by mesh who are being declined cover by ACC.
A review of mesh injury claims from 2005 to 2017 showed one in five claims was declined.
In the past year the decline rate jumped from 17 per cent to 28 per cent – with 43 of 152 claims turned down.
Spod’s nightmare started six years ago after a hernia repair procedure.
The mesh used to reinforce his weak abdominal wall now sits on a shelf at his home in Edgecumbe, Bay of Plenty, shrivelled up into a rust-coloured lump with sharp, wiry edges.
Post-operative pain had intensified over time, Spod said.
About 18 months after the surgery, the senior engineer collapsed and was given a morphine injection by a GP.
‘‘I never went back after that.’’
Left to cope without explanation, Spod became dependent on opioid painkillers for a period in 2013.
A claim to ACC was declined. ‘‘The surgeon said the ruling is that everybody has pain after an operation and it is just not really tangible or measurable, pain is not a condition that ACC accepts,’’ Spod said.
Struggling to manage the constant pain and incapacitated by the effects of the drugs, Spod was in no state to appeal and said he could not afford a lawyer.
He went under the knife again in 2013 but the procedure, which involved cutting a nerve, was unsuccessful.
During another surgery a few months later, the surgeon found the hernia mesh shrivelled up near his bladder and removed it.
Another mesh was used to repair the original hernia site, but ‘‘the damage was done’’ and the pain continued.
Doctors told him his pain was neuropathic, meaning a pain signal triggered by an injury continued after the nerve had repaired itself.
A three-week stay to work at a pain clinic in Rotorua helped Spod learn how to better tolerate the pain.
‘‘If it wasn’t for the training in Rotorua and a clear head I would have probably killed myself by now because you wake up and you think well, I just want to stop the bus even for five minutes.’’
A spokesman for ACC said a thorough investigation and consideration of all evidence was carried out on Spod’s claim.
‘‘No-one disputes that Mr Spod is in pain, but ACC cannot cover pain without an identified physical injury and the external opinions provided to ACC could not identify any injury causing his pain.’’
The New Zealand Association of General Surgeons said chronic pain could happen in less than 10 per cent of hernia surgery patients.
ACC barrister and researcher Warren Forster said ACC relied on the assessments of surgeons about whether pain was caused by a physical injury but that meant patients were not being given equal treatment.
‘‘Some surgeons say yes ‘this is an injury, it is this nerve and here is where it is damaged’ and others don’t – that is why some claims are approved and some aren’t.’’
Charlotte Korte, from support group Mesh Down Under, said patients were often too sick to make a claim, let alone appeal a decision to decline cover.
"The surgeon said ... everybody has pain after an operation ... pain is not a condition that ACC accepts." Joachim Spod