On November 23, 2020, a complaint against X was filed by the French victims of vaginal surgical prostheses. The case had been revealed in 2017, without legal action so far.
21 women filed a class action lawsuit on the following grounds: deception, aggravated deception, involuntary injuries. The reason for their anger? The suffering endured because of Prolift vaginal prostheses, banned in France since 2013. This product, created by French doctors, was used to prevent organ descent (or genital prolapse) linked to age or to a difficult childbirth. It is a kind of netting that supports the genitals, a device that seemed promising, but has become an instrument of torture with irreversible consequences for thousands of women.
Prolift prostheses began to be placed on the market in 2005. A patent was filed, then manufacturers copied the original model. Problem: the material used is in fact too heavy and this poses problems for the healing of the tissues, which causes an inflammatory reaction. On the other hand, the implantation is very technical and requires expert hands. However, the placing on the market of the prosthesis was not systematically accompanied by specific training for doctors. Finally, certain risks have been minimized: the difficulty of removing the device, the risk of pain during sex …
The French doctors who invented the device are themselves still wary of its safety at the time of its marketing.
"A rasp in the bladder"
As soon as the complications appeared, around 2005, the French women concerned felt abandoned: the laboratories did not tell them anything, their doctor can do nothing, it takes dozens of operations to remove the prosthesis, when the damage does not occur. are not already irreversible.
Reading the list of pain caused by these prostheses is almost unbearable. A woman testifying on France Info: "It was terrible urinary tract infections, urinary burns, stab wounds in the stomach, a feeling of having had a rasp in the bladder. Excruciating pain …" In some, these prostheses make it impossible to have sex. One of the complainants cannot even sit down without a buoy. Others admit to having been victims of even more serious problems: perforation of the rectum or bladder, lump in the vagina or even necrosis of the vaginal walls.
Patients abandoned by medicines
It took American complaints in 2012 for France to withdraw the device from circulation a year later. And it is therefore only this Monday, November 23, 2020, that the French victims can follow in the footsteps of other complainants in the world. 800 Australians had indeed filed an appeal and were compensated in 2017, the Minister of Health going so far as to apologize, as the Obs explains. In France, the victims are now supported by female lawyers, who have no difficulty in using adequate terms, such as "vagina" or "clitoris", to describe what their plaintiffs are going through.
What does this health scandal highlight? Problems of information for patients and lack of consent to care, two recurring problems. Asked by the Obs, the lawyers talk about "lack of information". Me Laure Heinrich thus declares: "For the courts, what matters is the decisive information. (…) It sounds like a hell of a thing called consent!"
Now, new prostheses exist, when other medical techniques have not been able to solve the problems of organ descent. The fact remains that victims still experience unimaginable suffering today. Me Laure Heinich concludes in Obs: "What is striking is the way these women's bodies were treated from start to finish. We are reduced to thinking that if this problem had affected men, it would surely have happened in a different way. . When we decline the grievances, a small voice rises to say: 'These are the problems of good women'. "
If you think you have such a device, consider going to a gynecologist for a check-up to be reassured with an ultrasound.