In February 2012,I asked my member of parliament Mr. Shaun Woodward on behalf of The Meshies United Group Uk to table questions in Parliamentregardingthe number of surgeries undertaken to implant a TVT or TOT mesh to treat stress urinary incontinence and the number of surgeries undertaken to remove the TVT or TOT mesh.

Mr Shaun Woodward, MP forSt Helen’s, asked the Secretary of State for Health the following questions:

  • How many NHS operations totreat stress urinary incontinence by insertion ofa Trans Obturator tape(TOT) or Tension Free Vaginal tape (TVT) meshsling in women had been performed in each of theprevious eight years.
  • How many operations to remove such slings had been undertaken in the same period.
  • How manyadverse event reports associated with such slings had been recorded by the MHRA.

These results below show statistics for England alone and do not include Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland who are all part of The United Kingdom.

Procedure / 2006-07 / 2007-08 / 2008-09 / 2009-10 / 2010-11
Insertion of Transobturator Tape (TOT) / 2,580 / 5,045 / 5,750 / 5,569 / 5,426
Removal of Transobturator Tape (TOT) / 68 / 79 / 96 / 128 / 95
Insertion of Tension-Free Vaginal Tape(TVT) / 6,137 / 8,817 / 8,503 / 8,397 / 8,087
Removal of Tension-Free Vaginal Tape (TVT) / 287 / 417 / 506 / 475 / 508
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre. Activity in English National Health Service hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector. HES was unable to provide data for the years previous to 2006-07.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) received 107 incident reports since 2005 involving vaginal mesh tapes used for stress urinary incontinence (SUI) as follows:

Adverse Incident Reports
2005 / 8
2006 / 25
2007 / 3
2008 / 18
2009 / 19
2010 / 15
2011 / 19

In addition the MHRA has also had six reports in 2010, and 19 in 2011, where the device was unknown but likely to relate to vaginal tapes for SUI.

To date December 2012 The Medicine Health Regulator have not put these figures on their database as adverse incidents/complications.

These figures are from The NHS Source Statistics and should be included and would give a truer picture of how women are suffering complications from transvaginal mesh.

ReadHansard record: