Women demand inquiry over bone saw operations

CLARE KAVANAGH was one of a number of women who travelled to the Dáil yesterday to rally political support for a public inquiry into a controversial medical procedure that destroyed her quality of life.

The procedure, called a symphysiotomy, involved sawing through the ligaments of a woman’s pubic bone, to allow the safe delivery of a baby.

“I have had 31 years of back pain. I am also incontinent. I try to keep up with life but, really, this has crippled me,” Ms Kavanagh said yesterday.

Symphysiotomy was widely practiced in Ireland until the 1980s. Many women have claimed that it was performed without anaesthetic and without their knowledge or consent.

Ms Kavanagh and other members of the newly formed organisation, Survivors of Symphysiotomy (SOS), had no difficulty convincing opposition TDs of the need to get answers to their questions.They listened in dismay from the public gallery when Health Minister Micheál Martin told the Dáil during question-time that he has no plans to establish a public inquiry.

Statistics show that 348 symphysiotomies were carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda between 1950 and 1983. Hundreds more were carried out at maternity hospitals in Dublin and Cork.

Many of the women had only recently found that their health problems were linked to the operations.

Ms Kavanagh, the mother of five children, said she only discovered two years ago that her pelvis was surgically opened for the birth of her first and last child. Former master of the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, Dr Peter Boylan, recently defended the gynaecological procedure and claimed that women like Ms Kavanagh were being misled.

Dr Boylan pointed to a study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden claiming that the rate of long-term complications such as backache, infertility and leg pain were the same for both symphysiotomies and Caesarean sections.

Ms Kavanagh said as far as she knew there had never been any follow-up on women in Ireland who underwent symphysiotomies. “I was old before my time because of what happened to me,” she said.

Symphysiotomies are usually only performed when there is no safe alternative because of the risks that include injury to the bladder and urethra, infection, pain and long-term walking difficulty.

Ireland, however, was unique among European countries in terms of the number of procedures carried out.

Ms Kavanagh was at odds with Dr Boylan, who claimed it was untrue to say that the operations were barbaric. “They were barbaric. I still can’t think of a better word to describe it,” she argued.