Intraperitoneal Ventralex Patch Applications in Ventral Hernia Repairs

Ventral hernias are among the common conditions in surgical practice and umbilical hernias are the most frequently encountered ones of them. The development of recurrence at the rates varying from 10% to 54% after the repair of ventral hernias with primary suture techniques (herniorrhaphy) have made patch repairs (hernioplasty) popular. In our clinic, a total of 71 patients were operated by using the Ventralex patch, one side of which was ePTFE and the other side was polypropylene and which could be administered intraperitoneally, between January 2015 and June 2017. Hernias larger than 3 cm were not included in the study. Small ventral hernias were repaired with open surgical method by intraperitoneal tension-free method. Of the patients, 40 were male and 31 were female, and the mean age was 47.5 (range 28-74) years. According to the ventral hernia typing, there were 46 cases with umbilical hernia (65%), 18 cases with paraumbilical hernia (26%), and 7 cases with trocar site hernia. All cases were operated under general anesthesia. Duration of operation, analgesic requirement, duration of hospitalization, postoperative complications, and recurrences were recorded. The mean duration of surgery was detected to be 35 min (range 22-60). All patients were applied analgesia on the first day after surgery and discharged one day after the operation. They were asked to come for the first control examination after 1 week and for the second control examination after 4 weeks. Minimal wound site infection was observed in two cases (2.8%). No recurrence developed in any case. In our study, we concluded that the Ventralex patch used in small ventral hernia cases that were operated with open technique is a prosthetic material that can safely be used owing to its advantages including low complication rate, ease of application and shorter hospitalization