Surgical Mesh

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on this important debate. She is right to call this a scandal. A constituent of mine now has a colostomy bag and severe internal pain and probably cannot give birth safely in future. She is 24. She makes the point that ventral rectopexy mesh procedures are not included in the audit, apparently because there is no code for surgeons to enter. May I join the hon. Lady in pressing the Minister to go back and include that in the audit so that my constituent’s suffering can be recorded?

[Emma Hardy]

I absolutely agree, and I hope that will be included in future.

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.

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.