Mesh implants are a quick fix, used by surgeons to strengthen weak tissue in operations to treat prolapse, female and male stress incontinence, hernias and some breast reconstructions following mastectomy. It is also used in some animal surgeries.

Surgical mesh is a permanent polypropylene plastic implant. It can harden, fragment, twist, to slice into nerves, tissue and organs like an internal knife. The plastic material can cause pain, infections, autoimmune diseases, UTIs, and trigger allergic reactions, including psoriasis, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, Lichen sclerosus, lupus, food allergies and intolerances.

We also have members struggling with complications from biomesh made of pig or cow’s skin.

Complications can begin immediately for some, while for others problems appear years later – like a ticking time bomb.

This makes it especially difficult to track the scale of harm.

Removing mesh implants is major, complex surgery and in some cases is impossible. Some patients improve, some are worse and others see no difference – as found in the Sling The Mesh Survey 2019.

Pelvic mesh was rushed to market using the flimsiest of evidence. It was used for almost a decade without a specific hospital implanting code so the data held by NHS vastly under estimates the thousands of women affected.

New products continue to be approved using a flawed medical device approval system known as Equivalence in Europe and the 510K system in the US. The approval system is so weak that an Oxford University professor was on the brink of getting supermarket orange netting approved as a vaginal mesh to prove the failings.

Long-term complications are not captured globally.

For good background reading this article by Jonathan Gornall describes how mesh became a four-letter word.

Key objectives

• Raising awareness of surgical mesh risk.
• Educating the public on scientific research flaws causing patient harm.
• Calling for tougher approval, regulations and oversight to improve patient safety.
• Databases to track long term harm of medical devices which can spot trends of harm.
• Campaigning for the implementation of all nine First Do No Harm key recommendations.
• Financial redress for women harmed by pelvic mesh.
• Lobbying for a UK Sunshine Payment Act to improve transparency in the health sector by forcing the pharmaceutical and medical device industry to declare money given to doctors, researchers, lobby groups, health charities, surgeon societies and teaching hospitals. This money can add bias to prescribing and affect research integrity. So far, we’ve succeeded in laying the foundations which would need detailed secondary legislation. The US system allows the public to search Drs and researchers on an open database.
• Lobbing government for mandatory reporting of adverse events to the MHRA Yellow Card. It is currently voluntary. Two thirds of mesh complications were not logged as a result.
• Lobbying government to #raisethelimit for Product Liability legal cases from the current 10 years to at least 20 years to tie in with the rest of Europe.

Get in touch: slingthemesh@gmail.com

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  Caldera Medical buys TVT Mesh: a new chapter in an ongoing global scandal
  At Sling the Mesh we watch with interest following the recent announcement that Caldera Medical has acquired the notorious TVT mesh sling range from Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon division. These products were suspended in the UK in 2018 after the government accepted the product had caused severe complications and made the announcement to avoid further risk of life changing and […]
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  How Much Longer Must We Wait? Women harmed by mesh demand justice
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  From trust to trauma: how pelvic mesh destroyed my health and changed my life forever
  The moment I woke up from having the mesh implanted I knew there was something not quite right but the surgeon came to see me and said I will be so pleased with the results so I trusted him and put it all down to the surgery. Two weeks later when I still could not stand up straight and the […]
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  You’re the only one — my surgeon’s shocking response when I saw my mesh on TV
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  The Mesh Scandal: A Wake-Up Call on Medical Misogyny
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