A British woman whose ovaries were removed without her consent during an operation to insert a vaginal mesh implant has killed herself due to the unbearable pain.
An inquest determined Lucinda Methuen-Campbell’s cause of death was suicide, the BBC reports, after the surgery left her both coming to terms with the loss of her ovaries and in pain for years.
The doctor who performed the surgery, Dr Tony Dixon, is internationally recognised for his work using mesh implants to treat bowel disorders. He has now been suspended from Spire hospital in Bristol, where he performed Ms Methuen-Campbell’s surgery, and is under investigation.
Ms Methuen-Campbell, 58, told the BBC after her 2016 operation that the potential removal of her ovaries had never been discussed with her, the Telegraph UK reports.
She said of Dr Dixon: “He said he thought he’d done me a favour. And he said, “I thought you know, a woman of your age wouldn’t really need her ovaries.”
“I said, ‘why did you remove them?’ and he just said, ‘they were in the way.’”
She added: “My life is absolutely ruined.”
Ms Methuen-Campbell’s ex-partner, Philip Chatfield, told the BBC this week that she had a second operation that made her pain even worse.
“There didn’t seem to be a way out of the pain,” he said.
