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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