L
ike many surgical facility leaders,
the hospital administrator
assumed that biologic meshes
must be superior to synthetic
meshes when it came to providing a durable hernia repair.
After all, she reasoned, biologic mesh costs around twice as much as
synthetic — and not just because biologic is made of human or animal
skin or small intestinal tissue harvested from pigs, but because it's
superior in the clinical outcomes that matter most with mesh: recur-
rence rates and infection rates. Plus, she'd heard from many of her
surgeons who began to use biologic meshes in the 1990s in an effort
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O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5
The Case for
Biologic Hernia Repair
z CHOICE OF MESH Use of biologic
meshes for abdominal wall reconstruction
is recommended in contaminated fields.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN
Though more costly, is there evidence that using biologic
mesh results in lower recurrence and infection rates?
Dan O'Connor
Editor-in-Chief
