Kath H Sansom

A former journalist, now working in media relations, Kath H. Sansom is an expert speaker with lived experience, on the complications caused by mesh devices used by surgeons to strengthen weak tissue.

The mesh fabric is used in operations to repair pelvic organ prolapse, incontinence, hernia repairs, rectal prolapse, some mastectomy operations and also for men suffering incontinence after prostate cancer.

Sansom set up Sling The Mesh in 2015 after experiencing extreme pain from a mesh sling operation to fix incontinence caused by the birth of her very large second baby. The support group has grown from 20 to almost 10,000 members globally. In that time her work has secured national and international coverage raising awareness of mesh risks and prompted debates at medical and scientific conferences, which she has attended as a patient advocate.

Mesh devices are made of polypropylene plastic and were rushed to market based on the equivalence route, requiring no long-term clinical trials. Its use continues based on flimsy scientific evidence, which does not properly capture long-term harm including pain, infection, loss of sex life, autoimmune diseases and allergies.

Sansom's advocacy led to debates in English Parliament, followed by suspension of incontinence mesh in 2018. Additionally, it led to an intensive review lasting more than two years into the risk of mesh implants, plus nine key recommendations to improve patient safety.

Sansom has vast knowledge on the flaws in scientific evidence, including the pervasive issue of payments from industry, leading to conflicts of interest and bias in the literature of all medical treatments - not just mesh.

She has appeared multiple times on national UK channels including Sky News, BBC, ITV and Channel 4 as well as Canadian CBC, In print her work has been elevated on international platforms including all of the UK national daily titles also Aljazeera, Huffington Post and The World Health Organization magazine.

Sub Specialties:
• Patient safety through the lens of talking about flawed scientific evidence.
• Corruption in the healthcare industry via payments from industry to doctors, researchers, health charities, teaching hospitals.
• Lack of informed consent for healthcare treatments.
• Medical misogyny and institutional denial when a patient is harmed.
• Advocacy for all research trials to be published

Flawed scientific evidence
• Most trials only follow up patients’ short term (six weeks to three months). Many treatments don’t see complications until months or even years later.
• Patient questionnaires (Patient Recorded Outcome Measures) often focus on the fix and not new emerging complications eg incontinence mesh was deemed a success because it fixed leaks but failed to log long term pain. One in four women on their support group needed a wheelchair or a stick to walk but they are logged in the data as a success.
• The data doesn’t look into autoimmune issues caused by medical devices such as the plastic in mesh triggering a host of illnesses.
• Her advocacy has set the wheels in motion for registries to be set up in the UK to track patients for life who have had a Class III medical device such as mesh. This way, trends of harm can be spotted early and acted upon.

Industry influence
It’s well proven that industry payments lead to bias in scientific evidence with research that overstates the benefits and underplays the risk of health care treatments.

Sansom's campaigning has led to the foundations for a Sunshine style payment act for the UK, as there is in America, so that patient advocates like myself can access information to see if a doctor or a particular research paper has been influenced by payments form the pharmaceutical or medical device industry. The foundations were incorporated into the UK Health and Social Care Act 2022.

Lack of Informed Consent
Fully informed consent must be given to all patients before treatment eg nine in 10 patients were not told that mesh is a permanent device which cannot be removed if they suffer complications. None of us were told it is made of plastic.

Medical Misogyny
• The majority of women in the support group have been gas lighted, told they are a mystery patient or ridiculed by the healthcare system when they present with mesh injuries
• This institutional denial happens in many healthcare arenas when a patient is harmed.

Publish all research trials
Many trial results go unpublished especially if they are stopped. All results must be made public in the name of patient safety.