There is an aggressive drive underway in Ireland to lift the suspension on bladder mesh sling implants – a deeply concerning development for thousands of women who have suffered life-altering injuries from these devices.

The campaign is being led by a high-profile surgeon with strong affiliations to leading Royal Colleges and professional institutions, both in Ireland and internationally. While professional credentials may impress on paper, they do not erase the lived experiences of countless women harmed by polypropylene mesh used in stress urinary incontinence (SUI) procedures.

Bladder mesh slings were suspended in Ireland and the four nations of the UK in 2018.

The push appears to be gaining momentum behind closed doors, with minimal input from the very people most impacted – women who have endured chronic pain, autoimmune reactions, nerve damage, sexual dysfunction, and erosion of the mesh into surrounding organs.

Ignoring Global Evidence

The call to lift the 2018 suspension flies in the face of growing international caution. Countries such as the UK and Australia imposed significant restrictions or outright bans on vaginal mesh surgeries following public outcry and evidence-based reviews. In the UK, the 2020 Cumberlege Review heavily criticised the aggressive push of pelvic mesh based on flimsy evidence with no long term data capture on complications. The review called for sweeping change – none of which has happened.

Are women in Ireland less deserving of this same level of protection?

Conflicts of Interest and Professional Influence

The leading surgeon advocating for the return of mesh has deep ties to international urology and gynaecology bodies, contributing to guideline panels and surgical training programs. Yet the very institutions meant to uphold standards of safety and ethics appear to be ignoring growing patient advocacy, legal cases, and the lied experience of thousands. yet more remain hidden and unseen owing to medical misogyny and gaslighting where women in terrible pain are told they are a mystery patient and thus not offered any care – or logged in any data as a complication. This is especially true of older women without IT skills to connect with other women suffering.

A Pattern of Silencing and Minimisation

Time and again, women who raise concerns about mesh are dismissed, gaslit, or labelled as “hysterical” or “anecdotal.” Yet the weight of their testimony, combined with the clinical literature on mesh complications, tells a different story. When professional gatekeepers dominate the conversation, patient voices are sidelined.

We cannot—and will not—accept a return to a system that failed so many.

What Needs to Happen

Sling the Mesh calls for the following immediate actions in Ireland:

1. Maintain the current suspension on all bladder mesh slings until a retrospective audit has been carried out to fully asses the scale of complications.
2. Mandatory conflict of interest declarations for all clinicians and academics involved in mesh policy decisions.
3. Inclusion of injured women’s voices in all deliberations about the future of mesh in Ireland.
4. Transparent publication of complication rates, long-term follow-up data, and patient-reported outcomes.

If Ireland lifts the suspension under pressure from professional lobbying, it will risk repeating the very harms that led to its introduction in the first place. Women’s health cannot be an afterthought. It must be front and centre in any decision that affects their bodies, their futures, and their families.

We urge Irish regulators and policymakers: listen to women. Do not turn back the clock.

BACKGROUND

Lived experience of mesh complications

No amount of surgeon training can compensate for a product that is inserted blind using giant hooks that the FDA says can cause injuries for up to 25% of women during insertion. Once inserted the plastic material can degrade, shrink, twist, act like an internal knife. Sometimes these complications cut in immediately and other times it is over years.

There are 12,000 members on #slingthemesh support group, many of whom have had mesh slice through their urethra, through vaginal walls, into bladders and bowels

The plastic mesh material itself can cause ongoing urinary tract infections and over half of Sling The Mesh members suffer with UTIs. Of those around 1 in 10 end up in A&E with sepsis where they’re becoming antibiotic resistant.

Not to mention the allergies, autoimmune diseases, IBS and fibromyalgia that are prevalent within the support group. New research says the plastic mesh material can trigger autoimmune diseases even after removal. And a groundbreaking study says mesh can begin to break down just six weeks after insertion.

Mesh can cause chronic crippling pain, affect mobility with many members struggling to walk and needing a stick or wheelchair, loss of sex life due to pain.

Women have lost jobs, marriages, hobbies and their quality of life both physiclaly and mentally.

All for a surgery they were assured was a low risk, gold standard option.