Mesh concerns need addressing urgently

HUNDREDS of women across the UK are coming forward to talk about their harrowing experiences of mesh implants.

The implants, which are most commonly used to ease incontinence and to support vital organs, have left women physically and mentally scarred.

In some of the worst cases, mesh victims suffer with almost constant pain, need a wheelchair to get around and are unable to have sex.

The effects of this medical device, sometimes referred to as a sling implant, are so excruciating that women have even considered taking their own lives.

One woman, Pauline Inch, from Barry, said the mesh was “embedded” in her bowel, abdomen and surrounding organs.

She said she didn’t “feel human any more” and was unable to hold her newborn grandson because of the damage the mesh was doing to her insides.

Her comments have been echoed by other women in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with some claiming the mesh had “shrunk and sliced through their vaginal walls”.

But what makes their distressing accounts more bewildering is the fact that the procedure is so common in today’s NHS.

It is understood that more than 120,000 women received a vaginal mesh implant, which is the most common, between April 2007 and March 2015 – with an estimated 10,000 complications.

As many as 800 women are thought to be suing the NHS and the implants’ manufacturers for the trouble it has caused them.

The issue has become so widespread that MPs, doctors and mesh victims came together last month for a special meeting in Parliament. An All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mesh Implants has now been created and will hold its first meeting in September.

We are living in an age where healthcare technology is improving at a rapid rate, which should give us all cause for optimism.

Wales will soon house the UK’s first proton beam therapy centre, offering cancer patients an incredibly precise, targeted form of radiotherapy to give them the best chance of survival.

Millions of pounds are being invested in surgical techniques and equipment which aim to reduce the likelihood of complications. Wales’ universities are also leading the fight against a range of neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and dementia.

So to see hundreds of women suffering at the hands of a plastic mesh implant is deeply concerning and goes against all the technological progress seen in recent times.

The NHS should undertake a full investigation to determine exactly 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.

No more women should suffer at the hands of a mesh, which can take as little as 20 minutes to insert but can cause a lifetime of unnecessary suffering. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2016 was 62.8%