Pharmacological Treatment of the Hernia Disease

Hernia repair using mesh implants is one of the most commonly performed procedures in surgery. For incisional hernia repair, recurrence rates could be decreased to below 10% by means of supportive mesh materials [31]. Even in inguinal hernia repair, laparoscopic and open mesh techniques are nowadays widely accepted and increasingly performed. Classical studies concerning risk factors implicated in the development of primary and recurrent inguinal and incisional herniation usually focus on surgical techniques, the local anatomy, and physical alterations like raised intra-abdominal pressure and hernia size. Nowadays, the centre of attention has shifted to alterations of the extracellular matrix (ECM), its major component collagen and degrading matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) leading to the occurrence of herniation [2,3,8,13,14]. Collagens represent the quantitatively most abundant protein of the body and are the most important scleroproteins of the ECM. Within the first phases of wound-repair processes, tissue formation is characterized by fibroplasias, neovascularization, migration and ECM production.