Time To Compensate TVT Victims
Time To Compensate TVT Victims in light of the US halt on the sale of Vaginal Mesh blamed for thousands of injuries.
Thousands of women in the UK have reported serious complications, including chronic debilitating pain and bleeding, infections and erosion into other parts of the body after they were implanted with a TVT mesh medical device. It is commonly used to prevent the bladder and uterus from dropping or pressing into the vaginal area in prolapse or stress incontinence cases.
NHS Digital undertook a recent audit highlighting that more than 100,000 women had vaginal mesh inserted between 2008 and 2017 to treat stress urinary incontinence, which is common after childbirth. Many experience complications and many more will do so in the future as complications do not always arise straight away. So what is the NHS doing about it?
“Patient safety is our highest priority, and women must have access to safe medical devices,” said Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, the director of the FDA’s Centre for Devices and Radiological Health in the US which has blocked the sale of vaginal mesh products. The UK halted the use for a time to consider the complication rates and seriousness of the injuries. However, Mesh implants can be offered again on the NHS in England once certain conditions are met said NICE
Emma Hardy, Labour MP for Kingston Upon Hull West and Hessle said in the House of Commons on 19th April 2018 that “These women were injured. These women were ignored. These women are the victims of a scandal”. The true scandal is still being lived by these women who cannot access corrective surgeries and whose compensation claims are being denied by the NHS.
Analysis conducted by Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford and clinical adviser to the APPG on surgical mesh implants, reveals that the 100,516 women who have undergone mesh surgery in England since 2008 have required follow-up treatment in 993,035 out-patient appointments. He has calculated the total cost to the NHS for all incontinence and out-patient appointments to be £245 million. His analysis of the trend in out-patient appointments also shows that more are required by women as each year passes after their surgery, which is completely the opposite of what you would expect after a successful surgery.
Emma Hardy Stated that “The data shows that the number of operations using mesh has halved over the last decade, which shows that doctors and patients are voting with their feet and telling the world that they do not want to use mesh”.
Carl Heneghan said: “Health professionals have a duty of candour to offer an appropriate remedy or support to put matters right (if possible) and to be open and honest with patients when something goes wrong”.
Women can either self-refer or be referred by their GP to any one of the specialist centres across the country identified by the British Society of Urogynaecology based on compliance with set criteria.
“NHS England is currently producing a specification for mesh removal centres which will be commissioned to provide care for women with mesh complications through a network.
Yes in January 19 Ms Elneil stopped further referrals for corrective treatment. Women are waiting up to 16 months for mesh removal with Ms Elneil and around a year with the other key surgeons that women trust, Natalia Price of Oxford, Hashim Hashim of Bristol and Karen Ward of Manchester. The NHS target wait limit is 18 weeks.
Time To Compensate TVT Victims
The UK has to listen and act accordingly. Despite the rhetoric by MP’s the NHS is still making women pursue clinical negligence claims through the courts. Each Trust is defending and denying liability and making women obtain intrusive medical evidence and undergo the stress and uncertainty of litigating their claims. It is requiring further intrusive medical examinations with experts of their choice to try and obtain evidence to defeat the each and every claim. This is the true shame of the NHS. Not only were women given a product which was not fit for purpose and which injured them, they were ignored for years when they complained about the side effects and complications. Lives were lost, jobs and relationships lost, futures curtailed.
The NHS needs to acknowledge that women should be treated with rehabilitation and counselling and provided with the variety of conservative and surgical options that are available. They need compensate to rebuild their lives without having to go through litigation and examinations with Defendant doctors. They need to put in place measures to assist the ongoing disability experienced by so many women.
The NHS has harmed these women. The NHS blames them for choosing the procedure and blames their bodies for reacting to it. It is time to ask our MP’s to make the NHS accountable. Be apologetic. Provide rehabilitation and compensation and take out the adversarial nature of litigation from dealing with these cases. It is Time To Compensate TVT Victims.
If you need help of advice in relation to a TVT claim then please contact Dr Victoria Handley on 0800 470 2009 or email vhandley@handleylaw.co.uk. Our Solicitors for Women team will be happy to help you.