If you are having trouble figuring out which nerve is causing the sensations you are feeling, see if you can find it here and click on it. Please let us know if this helps. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ … Continue reading →
The two main nerve complications TOT-injured women report in support groups are 1) pudendal and 2) obturator in that order. Because most studies do not evaluate for nerve injuries past 3-12 months, there is no scientific estimate of how common the injury is. Our experience is that it is extremely common. Pudendal injury causes persistent pain localized around the urethra and around the clitoris, irradiating to the one labia majora (maximum at the lower edge of symphysis) or both.
Polypropylene creates cripples when placed inside the pelvis.
The pudendal nerve is nowhere near the pathway of an obturator tape so how did the women get injured? The mystery may have been solved by three Czech investigators.
In 2011, Jaromir Masata & Petr Hubka & Alois Martan decided to look into why their patient, a 48 years old female obtained a pudendal nerve injury. After receiving a TVT-O, the woman experienced what the authors saw as an “atypical” postoperative pain that continued without relief for three years. While the authors treated her with injections and replaced her sling with yet another dubious tape, the work they did to track down the cause of her injury is valuable.
Authors circled scar and placed a “+” pointing to correct placement location.
The woman’s insertion scar (see Figure 1) was in the wrong place. By using a cadaver to trace the aberrant passage of her sling, the researchers found it intersected with the pudendal nerve. How many others were injured this way? Are you one of them? Was your transobturator tape placed incorrectly? If the manufacturer provided short videos and an instruction sheet, was that adequate training for your surgeon?
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Peggy Day is working on a book to combine all these stories. This is an excerpt from Pelvis in Flames: Your Pelvic Mesh Owner’s Guide. Your input is welcome to help make Pelvis in Flames the book you need to read.
If you’d like to join an online support group and learn about erosion, partial removals, surgeons, or just find out that you are not alone, join my group, Surgical Mesh or check the list of support groups here.
Subscribe to PelvicMeshOwnersGuide.com to learn more about pelvic mesh. I’d like to hear from you if you are helped by what you read here or if you need to know more about any particular topic. Comment below or email me privately at daywriter1@gmail.com..
This blog contains first-hand opinions about pelvic surgical mesh from a calliope of experience: from 10 years of meetings, phone calls, emails and social network with mesh victims, interviews with surgeons, years of front-line emergency nurse work and early work in biostatistics and medical research, to walking the mesh walk today. I’ve learned about the magnificent inner strength of women facing unparalleled and unimaginable pelvic injuries and, along with it physical, emotional, social and spiritual challenges that would buckle the knees of the bravest soldier. These women inspire me in their tenacity and unwillingness to let go of the true joy in their lives.
To those women, I dedicate this blog.