Radio Boston ran a short piece on the problems with vaginal mesh earlier this week, but a key voice didn’t make the final cut: Dr. Anne Weber, a urogynecologist, formerly with the NIH, was the lead author of a clinical practice bulletin on pelvic organ prolapse published by the influential professional group, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
In the bulletin, published back in 2007 Dr. Weber used the word “experimental” to describe a type of surgery in which synthetic mesh is implanted vaginally to repair prolapse, a condition many women face after childbirth and as they age in which tissues become stretched and weakened and pelvic organs, such as the bladder, can sag or bulge into the vagina. Seven months after the original bulletin was published, it was pulled, and replaced with another bulletin on prolapse, this one with the word “experimental” gone.
Dr. Weber says the revision, which she opposed, was based on some doctors’ fear that insurers would not cover a procedure deemed experimental. “I think ACOG was choosing to protect its clinicians’ insurance incomes over patients’ well being,” she told me in an interview.
You can read more about the controversy, and about why vaginal mesh surgery is now under scrutiny, here.
So, for the record, here’s the full Radio Boston segment, with Dr. Weber’s comments included.
Because so many women in this country are obsessed with their weight, and carry around a sad sense that their bodies are never good enough (bolstered by social pressure and the proliferation of unrealistic images of beauty) stories about eating disorders resonate profoundly. The crazy drumbeat of “thinner is better” is so very familiar to most of us, it’s the soundtrack we live with: “If I just lost 10 or 20 or 30 pounds, my life would fall into place — I would finally be in control.” But for some, that low-level fixation grows and grows, until it takes over, crossing a line into illness and true despair.