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New personalized hernia patch made out of skin
This gets me really excited. And seems so logical. Hmmm a hernia patch made out of skin/tissue or a piece of plastic to put inside the human body. I hope this can gain traction.
The patient in this article had it done to repair a umbilical hernia but i see no reason the concept can’t be used for all hernias.
They quote pure tissue repairs as having a 40-50% chance of recurrence which is ridiculous but they may be quoting that to give support to their approach.
Seems like a natural tissue repair with the skins graft (the make holes in it) over the area could be the best approach (they may do that anyways not sure)
It’s about time we start moving away form the plastic meshes but I’m sure the billion dollar mesh industry will be a huge roadblock -
5 Replies
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I think that what was described in that story might also be called an autograft, among other possible terms. It’s actually fairly common. The story itself is more of a human interest story. I searched for the name of the main person in the story on Google Scholar and only found a couple of articles, about rat studies. It looks a lot like “cowboy” surgery, where somebody just decided to try something and it looked like it worked in the short time frame that they were in its presence. If the woman in the article has problems they could be in trouble. It’s not “standard of care”.
The authors also appear to work mostly in emergency surgery. Trauma surgeons.
Many references about about abdominal trauma and emergency surgery. Gun shots and bullet fragments. People that are already in very bad shape. Easy subjects. I think that the main “hernias” that they were working on were incisional, or ventral, hernias.It’s a neat story, and concept, but it’s unproven. And nobody is going to sponsor a study about it I think, there’s no money in it.
Hate to be a downer, but as long as the device makers control the field, it’s going to be all about new devices. New products to sell. But it doesn’t hurt to plan for the day that healthcare changes back to a patient focus.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C48&q=%22Ian+Hodgdon%22&btnG=
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=20&q=%22P.+Greiffenstein%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,48
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Alephy
They are doing the procedure at LSU. The article says they’ve done over 300 so far.
I am not sure if they are find them for only certain types of hernias (ie umbilical ) or all hernias. It seems it can be done for all even though the inguinal area may be a more complex repair . At the very least it seems that the skin “mesh” can be used as a reinforcer in addition to a pure tissue repair.
As far as I know this is only being done at this facility.
It would be interesting to see the stats (recurrence and pain %.
If you scan the literature you will find that specialty hospitals and surgeons that primarily do tissue repairs report a very low recurrence rate otherwise a much higher one is reported.
I believe surgeons these days report a much a higher rate because they aren’t trained on tissue repairs and don’t have the skill needed to do them well. -
As for the chance of recurrence can one doctor from the forum comment on what the recurrence rate was before mesh? Shouldice seems to have always had low recurrence rate if I am not mistaken…
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Really interesting! Any thoughts on how long before this is widely available?
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I should add this is human skin and I believe from the patient. This isn’t freakin pig skin or intestines!!!
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