Medical Council ‘carefully considers’ symphysiotomy report

The Medical Council says it is carefully considering a Government-commissioned report questioning the accuracy of medical reports submitted to a redress scheme.

The report on the symphysiotomy redress scheme published this week cast doubt on the veracity of many medical reports submitted on behalf of applicants for awards.

The assessor, Judge Maureen Harding Clark, said it was “concerning” that claims of disability by women who had not had the procedure were “supported” by medical opinion.

She said in many cases reports attributed “every health ailment” to symphysiotomy and included “new complaints previously absent from the records” over decades.

She gave a number of examples, including a woman whose medical report claimed she was traumatised by having a symphysiotomy, suffered “intractable incontinence”, pain and social isolation. But the judge insisted the applicant was “an absolutely normal woman” who rode her bike to work every day.

Other reports claimed applicants had a scar from the procedure when multiple examinations by other gynaecologists failed to find evidence of one.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Council said it would consider the report but added that it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.

‘Outraged’

The Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services Ireland said it was “outraged at the suggestion that the survivors of symphysiotomy have exaggerated, or been in some way dishonest, in their claims”.

It accused Judge Harding Clark of making “completely unfounded accusations” of dishonesty against elderly women and their supporters and of failing to hold hospitals and doctors to account for not keeping documentation.

“This report is a further violation of those women, who are and were entitled, in their latter years, to expect more of a State that claims, with little evidence, to be more enlightened.

“We find it appalling that women’s experiences, trauma and injuries at the hands of what was a highly patriarchal maternity care system, could be so lightly dismissed, and their suffering labelled as in some way ‘normal’.”

Under the scheme, Judge Harding Clark made 399 awards to women for amounts varying between €50,000 and €150,000. However, she rejected almost 200 further applications as unfounded because the women were unable to show they had the procedure.

Symphysiotomy involved cutting through the fibrous cartilage of the pubic joint to facilitate birth. Critics say the procedure was used in Ireland long after it fell out of favour elsewhere, and caused lifelong health complications for the women involved.