Part 2.

This lack of seeing the whole picture perhaps played a role in mesh being used in patients it should not have been.

The main problem vaginal implants were around from 2005 - 2010.   Women with issues after this product deserve to be compensated in full and I have encouraged several women to join the class action down the years.

What I am seeing currently however is people being made to worry about their sling procedures.  Sometimes this is justified but in most cases their issues are not due to the sling which essentially turns into a new muscle of the pelvic floor as time goes by.  This is why it gives a long standing result, unlike other stress incontinence procedures.

The new guidelines and credentialing will perhaps stop some doctors from offering services for prolapse and incontinence. 

Maybe not a bad thing to concentrate these specialised operations which have been treated too lightly by patients and surgeons alike.

However its more likely to happen like this....

I spoke to a younger colleague of mine who was not going to seek recredentialing with the thought that "Whats the point?  Incontinence is a dead duck.  I've got better things to do." 

So its a classic scenario where surgeons avoid training in a certain unglamorous field so there is a lack of trained specialists as time goes by.

Meanwhile due to the publicity women put up longer with their prolapses and incontinence leading to worse issues presenting later.

To spell it out - worse problems then being sorted out by less experienced doctors = women will suffer.

So the mesh saga with its repercussions in the long term will lead to women suffering more not less.

We expect things to keep improving in the world... its hard to accept things will be staying the same or even going backwards sometimes.

These are only my opinions of course and I may well be proved wrong however I'm writing this as I feel doctors have to reestablish the community's confidence in the ability of the medical profession to help with pelvic floor problems and to take back the role of educating the public from lawyers, journalists and special interest groups on social media.

In Europe they are puzzled by the way we have done things here in Australia.