I write to congratulate Peter Dwyer on his career achievements and contributions to the International Urogynecology Journal. At least in my view, Peter Dwyer and Paul Riss have taken the journal from a middle ranking journal to the unchallenged leader in the urogynecology field. Truly an admirable achievement! Looked at in relation to the scale of these achievements, writing to correct what I see as a minor error seems almost churlish! The correction is to do with the origin of the midurethral sling. Just as Peter Dwyer acknowledges the influence of his teachers on his career, so I have always acknowledged an intellectual debt to Robert Zacharin, starting with the first edition of my textbook in 2004.

It is correct to state that the midurethral sling operation was inspired by Dr. Zacharin’s anatomical work. However, the technique for the midurethral sling was entirely my own creation and it was based on my own experimental animal studies carried out at the Royal Perth Hospital in the years 1987 and 1988, where a tape inserted at the midurethra created an artificial collagenous neoligament to reinforce the weakened pubourethral ligament [1]. The full discovery process was published in the International Urogynecology Journal in 2015 [2].