Reasonable people disagree: lessons learned from the sling and mesh story

Excerpt

Over the past 20 years, innovative surgeons, in collaboration with industry, have attempted to improve the care of women who require surgical management of genuine urinary incontinence and/or pelvic organ prolapse. Two of the concerns that motivated these surgeons and their collaborators were that traditional surgical approaches to the treatment of genuine incontinence were associated with unnecessarily long convalescent periods and restrictions of activities, lost wages, and greater postoperative pain, and that traditional surgical procedures for treatment of pelvic organ prolapse did not provide durable results. In addition to these practical concerns, growth in the population of older women who are experiencing not only increased life expectancy, but also increasing years of vigorous activities, means that there are more women who want definitive surgical solutions to their problems. Consequently, the opportunities for industry to find profitable markets for their products and devices have grown. …