Principal Investigator: Michael Rosen, MD, FACS, Professor of Surgery, Chief of the Division of GI Surgery, Northwestern Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

A complication of abdominal surgery, incisional hernias occur when holes form in the abdominal wall that can dangerously allow a loop of intestine or fat tissue to bulge out. Most incisional hernias need surgical repair to close the hole to avoid painful, if not, emergency medical issues. A section of bowel, for example, could become stuck in the hernia opening and lose its blood supply.

Twenty-five years ago, a landmark study showed that mesh repair reduced incisional hernia recurrence by a remarkable 50%. The use of a mesh for closing hernias instead of what was traditionally sutures alone has been the standard of care ever since. While this widely-accepted technique reduces the odds of hernias re-forming, mesh placement can lead to infections, chronic pain, reoperations, and bowel obstructions. Due to modern-day surgical advances in suturing, the investigators propose reconsidering the use of mesh for patients with small and mid-sized incisional hernias. Awarded this year’s DHF grant, Dr. Rosen’s team plan to assess in a multi-center clinical trial if primary sutures work just as well as mesh. Their ultimate goal is to significantly improve patient outcomes for the more than one million individuals who undergo life-changing hernia repair each year in the U.S. alone.