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Change Your Life! |
Mesh better than new stitches for hernia |
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August 10, 2000
UNDATED (AP) - When a surgical scar pops open in an abdominal muscle, mesh is better than new stitches to repair the damage, a new study says. Sometimes the reopening of an incision causes organs, usually the intestines, to push out through the muscles, creating a bulge beneath the skin. If the intestines cannot be pushed back into place, they may become twisted, cutting off the blood supply. Incisional hernias can either be repaired by sewing them up again, or by sewing a patch of surgical mesh on either side of the break, overlapping the patches, then sewing them together. Doctors in seven hospitals around The Netherlands assigned 200 hernia patients at random to get one operation or the other. Twenty-four had to be dropped from follow-up for one reason or another. Within three years, surgeons had to make yet another repair in 46 percent of the 95 patients who had been stitched up, according to a study in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Only 23 percent of the 85 mesh repairs broke open again, it said. |