Good intentions

Yes, I had a direct hernia and have not had any signs or symptoms of recurrence since having the Bard Soft Mesh removed three years ago. There is still a small piece of mesh remaining though, near the site of the hernia. It was too entangled with critical structures to risk removing. The stiffening and thickening of surrounding tissue that the…[Read more]

Here is a post about a recent study using data from a “real” registry, not a company created and promoted pseudo-registry.

Lightweight vs heavyweight mesh

Here is the Ultrapro link to what I posted above.

https://www.jnjmedicaldevices.com/en-US/product/ultrapro-mesh-ethicon

Ethicon has delayed the publication of the report again, to December 2023. But they’re still using the suggestion that the study supports their products.

“Estimated Study Completion Date : December 31, 2023”

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00622583

“ULTRAPRO Partially Absorbable Lightweight Mesh offers strength with reduced foreign…[Read more]

Thank you for the reply Dr. Towfigh. Can you tell me what happened to my other post? It was more critical and detailed and pointed the blame at the device makers, like Ethicon, for promoting unproven ideas in order to sell more product. I thought that it was very rational and reasonable and I supported my comments with links to relevant…[Read more]

To be clear, my point about mesh being developed for situations like yours, should really say it’s meant for the situation that you might end up in because of your condition. Mesh is meant for use AFTER the pure tissue attempt fails.

I had written a long post that said essentially the same things that alephy said. The surgeon that you talked to sounded like a very common run-of-the-mill laparoscopic mesh repair surgeon. Everything you wrote is what the training of the day is. The “eye” shaped mesh sounds like a 3D product, which seems to be more prone to folding, from…[Read more]

Here is a typical mesh repair opinion, drgephys (his doctorate is in physics, not medicine). This person was very “pro mesh” right after he had his surgery, convinced that he had done his research and chosen the best possible repair method. But you can see that he’s not super enthusiastic about it today. He deals with it, apparently, but he’s…[Read more]

Thanks for posting this. You didn’t state it explicitly, but this is an example of a successful pure tissue repair. Since you’re at one year and healed, there is no reason to expect chronic pain to crop up in the future. If you do have a recurrence, you can always get a mesh repair in the future.

The only similar enthusiasm I’ve seen for a…[Read more]

I had an odd dysfunction wherein the corpus cavernosa would not fill with blood but the glans, and I assume the corpus spongiosum (hard to tell but I think it’s the pathway to the glans) would. I had normal sensation but no erection, just a swollen glans. The problem got worse and worse over the months of the third year of having implanted mesh.…[Read more]

“Chronic pain” is a term that didn’t really exist for hernia repair until mesh was introduced. So I don’t know about its association with any of the pure tissue methods.

It looks like your meeting with the Houston surgeon actually went very well. I don’t see the horrible manner described that you mentioned. And I don’t think that any doctor…[Read more]

You could just try to push through his bad manners and contact him again. You might end up surprised. At least ask him if he knows the difference between the modified Bassini and the original Bassini. You could also pose the question to his staff and ask if they can relay a reply back to you. I always tell people to write their questions down…[Read more]

Dr. Kang has written about the Bassini and the “modified” Bassini procedures. His impression was that the modification actually made the results worse and that’s aprt of what gave pure tissue repairs a bad reputation. It was, apparently, a simplified version, not taking the extra care needed to get a good result. Remember, hernia repair is a…[Read more]

The damage that the mesh does can never be undone. The tissue that is left behind when the mesh is tediously peeled back out is not the virgin tissue that was there before the mesh was implanted. There is a new layer of “scar” tissue, thicker and stiffer than what was there before. That was my point.