Vaginal implants: Lawyers for more than 120 women challenge dismissal of investigation for aggravated deception and unintentional injuries

Lawyers for 124 women suffering from complications related to vaginal implants told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that they filed an appeal in Paris on Thursday, July 3, against the dismissal of the investigation into aggravated deception and unintentional injuries related to these medical devices, which are supposed to treat prolapsed organs or incontinence.

"It is essential, in view of the public health issue (...), that an investigation be opened so that the women who suffer every day from the suffering caused by these implants obtain justice," stated Hélène Patte, Amandine Sbidian, Dorothée Bisaccia Bernstein and Laure Heinich.

An investigation, opened in April 2021 at the public health division of the Paris judicial court and entrusted to the Central Office for Combating Attacks on Public Health (Oclaesp), was closed at the end of December 2024. In its statement of reasons, consulted by AFP, the public prosecutor explained that "no breaches of the regulations in force" had emerged , neither "by the manufacturers" nor "by the notified bodies responsible for certification" .

"The issue of side effects and the near irreversibility of the devices were not ignored" in the instructions of "most manufacturers," he also said. "In the vast majority of cases, these devices are well tolerated," he also noted, noting, however, that "the incidence rate of severe complications" was "not negligible."

Since 2020, dozens of patients have filed complaints in Paris, denouncing serious side effects (chronic pain, neurological disorders, organ perforations, bleeding, major sexual disorders, etc.) linked to the insertion, between 1999 and 2023, of suburethral slings and pelvic reinforcement prostheses from several brands.

In their appeal filed with the Paris Court of Appeal, which AFP has seen, their lawyers consider it "incomprehensible" that the prosecution has closed the investigation "without requesting further investigations" , even though it "expressly acknowledges that certain laboratories have remained silent about the irreversible nature of the procedure and its known complications" .

"In a large number of cases, the strips applied were neither necessary nor preceded by informed information on their irreversible nature (...) and on the complications," the councils insist. "Several of these devices have been withdrawn from the market abroad (United States, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada) after hundreds of thousands of civil proceedings and several convictions of manufacturers," they recall.

In France, the placement of implants for prolapse by vaginal route has been suspended since 2019; those placed by abdominal route and certain suburethral slings are still authorized and their placement is now regulated.