More than 200 women were left with life-changing physical problems or unable to work, while others suffered trauma and serious psychological damage after a Bristol surgeon performed “mesh surgery” on them unnecessarily, an NHS inquiry has found.
Overall, reports The Guardian, 203 women on whom Anthony Dixon performed procedures between 2007 and 2017 were harmed, according to a review by the North Bristol NHS trust (NBT).
Dixon, who for years was Britain’s most influential pelvic surgeon, worked for both the trust and the private Spire Hospital in the city.
MedicalBrief reported on 3 April 2019 that two years previously, Dixon had pioneered the use of artificial mesh to lift prolapsed bowels – a technique known as laparoscopic ventral mesh rectopexy (LVMR) – often caused by childbirth.
In 2017, NBT launched a review and suspended him after dozens of women on whom he had performed procedures complained of appalling consequences, including unmanageable pain and incontinence.
Later that year, 100 women were suing him for medical negligence, and while some cases have since been settled, dozens are ongoing.
An NHS hospital trust admitted in a BBC report that almost half of the patients given the controversial intervention should not have been operated upon.
Dixon was subsequently banned from practising in the UK.
During the review, 378 women had undergone the procedure, in which Dixon had inserted the plastic mesh to repair weakened tissue in the pelvic floor.
The trust had notified 203 NHS patients that, “although their LVMR operation was carried out satisfactorily, they should have been offered alternative treatments before proceeding to surgery”.
Of the 218 women Dixon had operated on at Southmead Hospital, 110 suffered harm. And among another 169 NHS patients on whom he performed LVMR at the Spire Hospital, 93 came to harm. Another 175 women he treated at both facilities suffered no harm and there were also nine other cases in which the clinical advisory group was unable to reach a conclusion.
The Guardian article – Bristol surgeon ‘harmed’ 203 women with unnecessary operations (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Half of patients should not have had mesh surgery, UK hospital admits
Mesh surgery exposed UK women to ‘unacceptable risk’
UK doctors call for inquiry into use of vaginal mesh surgery