By LOIS ROGERS
Within days of an operation to insert a mesh support to improve her bladder function after childbirth, Kimberley Vallis, knew something was very wrong.
She couldn’t move her left leg properly — ‘i had to use my hand to move it’ — and lumps, caused by blood clots, started to appear in her groin, recalls the 28-year- old former estate agent from Yate, near Bristol.
it was the start of two years of agony and urinary tract infections that culminated, she says, in her next pregnancy ending in a miscarriage. Kimberley had had a ‘foreign body response’ to the plastic mesh.
‘i kept asking them to take the mesh out, but they wouldn’t,’ she says.
‘Eventually i had a miscarriage. the baby died at six weeks, though i didn’t actually miscarry until 12 weeks. i’ve no doubt this was because of the infection set up by the mesh implant.’
her nightmare only ended when she spent £4,500 on private surgery to remove the surgical mesh ‘ribbon’.
‘i just couldn’t bear the pain and constant infections,’ says Kimberley who gave birth to her second son, Adam, 11 weeks ago.
She believes she was a victim of a procedure to tackle a taboo problem: the fact that many women never regain full bladder control after childbirth.
the stigma around incontinence has meant vast numbers of women suffer in embarrassed agony because of the disintegration of the polypropylene material used to support the bladder or womb after childbirth.
FRAGMENTS of the mesh, which is inserted like a hammock to support the bladder, can burrow deep into tissue like tiny shards of glass, causing excruciating pain and infection that has left some women unable to walk or even facing kidney removal. Others report pain during sex.
Studies have shown that the longer the mesh is left in, the more likely it is to ‘erode’, embedding itself into tissue in a way that it cannot be removed.
A study published in the Lancet last December showed women given mesh implants were roughly three times more likely to suffer complications and twice as likely to need follow-up surgery compared with the traditional version of the surgery, where stitches are used to provide support.
Last week Johnson & Johnson which produces Ethicon, one of the best-selling meshes, was ordered to pay more than £16 million in damages to a woman injured by the mesh.
it has also been ordered to pay £10 million in two other cases, and is facing a further 35,000 lawsuits in the U.S., with claims from at least nine other countries including class actions from Australia and new Zealand.
At least 800 women in England are taking legal action, it was reported by the BBC last week. But despite cases first coming forward back in 2011, authorities in the UK have so far insisted there is no problem.
in fact there are concerns about the current, official investigations. Last month an inquiry in Scotland published its report on over 1,500 women who have been affected, concluding that despite the problems, the mesh should still be available.
however before the report’s publication, four of the 20-strong inquiry team resigned, including chairman and leading public health specialist Lesley Wilkie, Wael Agur another top clinical lecturer from glasgow University, and patient representatives, Elaine holmes and Olive mcilroy.
meanwhile, an nhS England investigation has dispensed with input from