Vaginal Mesh Complications
Although the FDA has received over 2,000 verifiable reports of complications resulting from vaginal mesh surgery, the procedure is still being performed on hundreds of thousands of women. Most vaginal mesh surgery is used to treat one of two conditions: stress urinary incontinence (SUI) or pelvic organ prolapse (POP). Because the procedure was approved in 1996 and the first FDA warning was not issued until 2008, several lawsuits concerning vaginal mesh complications have been filed in nearly every state.
Vaginal Mesh Surgery
Vaginal mesh surgery sprang from the use of surgical mesh for the treatment of abdominal hernias. Surgical mesh is a flexible, perforated material that is surgically attached to tissue to hold organs or other tissue in place. After more than 40 years of being used for hernias, doctors began experiment with surgical mesh in transvaginal surgery to treat POP and SUI. Vaginal mesh surgery was approved to treat SUI in 1996 and POP in 2002.
Vaginal Mesh Complications Reported to FDA
Around 2005, nine years after vaginal mesh surgery was first approved, the FDA began receiving reports of complications resulting from the procedure. Some complications were merely the recurrence of the initial medical condition, but other, more severe …