For Women: Some Useful Information about the Bladder

Common to almost a quarter of the adult women population in the United States, there are still many who are confused about bladder prolapse. The bladder is a hollow organ belonging to the pelvic region.   Its main function is retaining urine to make voiding controllable.  The bladder, with all the neighboring organs like the urethra, uterus, and rectum, is held in place by the connective tissues that line walls of the vagina.  These connective tissues spread across the vaginal wall.  With age, these tissues stretch and shatter prompting the pelvic organs to be dislocated. This condition is called pelvic organ prolapse.

When the bladder falls into the front wall of the vagina (this condition is called bladder prolapse), symptoms occur such as pain in the pelvis or lower back and during sexual intercourse, urinary problems like stress incontinence and incomplete urination, and the development of infections. Women who have had their uterus removed, and those who have had multiple childbirths are most possible to acquire pelvic organ prolapse. Women after menopause are prone to this as well.  In menopause, there is a lower production of the hormone estrogen.  Since estrogen helps with the production of collagen in the body, lower estrogen level also means low collagen level.   When the body’s collagen level is down, pelvic tissues sag and crash. 

For this condition, treatment options are only few.  Vaginal mesh implantation is one of these.  As most women would say, it is the modern treatment for Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Stress Urinary Incontinence.   But, it has been associated with harmful after effects that are hard to correct if not permanent.  These adverse events include mesh erosion, pain, bleeding, recurrence of prolapse, problems with urination, pelvic organ perforation, and infections.

These negative effects of vaginal mesh prompted recipients of this medical device to file lawsuits against mesh manufacturers across the United States.  There are thousands of lawsuits filed, and there's a great chance this number will increase because there are still many mesh manufacturers producing these medical devices.  Because of these increasing number of vaginal mesh lawsuits, recipients and producers of these deadly medical devices are both requesting the Judicial Panel for a multidistrict litigation of defective vaginal mesh lawsuits. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) actively reacted on these issues by providing the public with safety information on the risks posed by the use of these meshes.  However, there are still many doctors performing vaginal mesh implantation to repair prolapsed pelvic organs like the bladder, uterus, rectum, and urethra; these have caused the increase of vaginal mesh lawsuit in the United States. The most common forms of these are urethral and bladder prolapse.

References:

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/prolapsed_bladder/page5_em.htm#Exams and Tests
http://bladder-problems.org/prolapsed-bladder-and-the-fixes/
http://www.cigna.com/individualandfamilies/health-and-well-being/hw/medical-topics/pelvic-organ-prolapse-tv1000.html