November 1, 2022 Hernia Repair A 66-year-old male patient with a history of ventral hernia, diabetes, and hypertension presents with lateral side pain. A CT scan reveals a recurrent ventral hernia (Grade 3) of the upper abdomen, measuring approximately 10 cm x 5 cm. What options would you consider to reinforce this abdominal wall defect? Dr. Alvaro Garcia chose to use a 20 x 25 cm Gentrix® Surgical Matrix Thick device. Gentrix, a fully resorbable biologically-derived device, is intended for the repair and reinforcement of complex hernia repairs, including ventral hernias. 1–4It facilitates ..read more

July 13, 2022 Hernia Repair In a nationwide review of nearly 400,000 patients who underwent open or laparoscopic ventral and inguinal hernia repair, readmission rates were 11.56% and 17.94% at 30 and 90 days, respectively. Yet hernia patients with lower socioeconomic status may have elevated risk of readmission, according to a study presented at the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) 2021 Annual Meeting. The study, which the authors believe is the first to focus on purely on socioeconomic status and hernia repair readmission rates using a nationwide data se ..read more

March 8, 2022 Hernia Repair It can be awkward to discuss weight loss with your patients. But having the conversation and partnering with a weight loss specialist prior to ventral hernia surgery may be your patient’s best chance to reduce their risk for surgical complications and hernia recurrence. “We have an obesity epidemic in this country,” says Dr. Vic Velanovich, professor of surgery, University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine in Tampa. “You see younger and younger people with obesity as a risk factor for downstream medical problems. Despite our encouragement to get peopl ..read more

February 10, 2022 Hernia Repair You know the odds: Many of your complex ventral hernia patients will experience a reoccurrence, and their success is often predetermined even before they set foot in your operating room. That’s why more and more surgeons are now focused on establishing an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocol, that is optimizing patient-related factors like body mass index (BMI), smoking and diabetes control, before open hernia repair surgery. That’s quite a challenge. Nearly half of adults in the U.S. are classified as obese, and it’s no wonder that patients are p ..read more

November 30, 2021 Hernia Repair Imagine if you could input hernia patients’ preoperative scans into a computer program and have artificial intelligence predict, with a significant degree of accuracy, which patients will need component separation surgery, develop a post-surgical wound infection or suffer from post-surgical pulmonary failure? Not only could this data help surgeons determine which hernia repair patients need specialty care, but it might also determine whether a patient proceeds with surgery once they can see the risks involved. That day is closer than ever. Hernia specialists ..read more

November 23, 2021 Hernia Repair Ventral hernias are common, but when left untreated, they can negatively affect a person’s quality of life by causing pain, impairing function and sometimes creating a disfiguring bulge. When there’s potential for the abdominal contents to become incarcerated or strangulated, a patient may need to undergo emergency surgery. Those surgeons tasked with abdominal wall repair are petitioning for a shift in how their clinical specialty is perceived. A group of general surgeons, backed by the Americas Hernia Society, recently launched an effort to turn attention aw ..read more

October 11, 2021 Hernia Repair Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Video As a college undergraduate, Alan Spievack cut limbs off of salamanders in order to research how long it took them to regenerate. Fifty years later, Spievack, then an MD, used a powdered extract of pig bladder to repair his brother’s finger when a model airplane propeller sliced off the tip. Spievack’s research on cell regeneration and extracellular matrices (ECM) ultimately led to the development of MatriStem Urinary Bladder Matrix (UBM) technology, designed for the management of complex wounds and reinforcement of h ..read more

Watch On Demand Left untreated, ventral hernias can significantly affect an individual’s quality of life by causing pain, impairing function and in some cases, creating a disfiguring bulge. Ventral hernia patients are also at risk for emergency surgery because of the potential for incarceration and strangulation of the abdominal contents. The goal of ventral hernia surgery is to repair the defect in the abdominal wall so that the intestine and other abdominal tissue cannot bulge through the wall again. Each year, surgeons perform upwards of 350,000 ventral hernia operations in the U.S. In th ..read more

June 8, 2021 Hernia Repair Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery 10 Things to Know About SurgiMend® Collagen Matrix for Soft Tissue Reconstruction Surgeons often turn to biologic meshes for hernia repair when synthetic meshes are not ideal for a given patient and presentation. SurgiMend® Collagen Matrix for Soft Tissue Reconstruction is a biologic that offers a distinct alternative to synthetic and other collagen products for soft tissue repair and reconstruction. Intrinsically strong, it handles and can be sutured in place like natural tissue. Here are 10 things you need to know about Surg ..read more