Rives – Stoppa surgery – the foundation of the modern concept of treatment of patients with ventral hernias (55 years in surgery)

The treatment of ventral hernias in the history of surgery has always been an urgent problem. In the 90s of the XIX century, hernioplasty using metal threads and plates began, but the long-term results of treatment of patients remained unsatisfactory. A particularly urgent problem in herniology during the last century was the treatment of postoperative ventral hernias, and patients with large and even more giant hernias were often recognized as incurable. The great revolution in herniology was the introduction into practice of biologically inert mesh polymer materials. A fundamentally different method of endoprosthesis of the abdominal wall is retromuscular («sublay») hernioplasty, proposed by the French surgeon of Algerian origin Rene Stoppa in 1965. In 1966, a compatriot, colleague and friend R. Stoppa Jean Rives used the principles of this technique when eliminating postoperative median hernia by prosthetics of the anterior abdominal wall retromuscularly through the xiphopubic incision. Decades later, during the rapid development of endovideosurgery, the principle of operation Rives-Stoppa was the foundation for the development of modern minimally invasive and highly effective methods for eliminating inguinal and other ventral hernias. Thus, the method of prosthetics of the anterior abdominal wall proposed 55 years ago by Rives-Stoppa was an ideological breakthrough in herniology and significantly improved the results of operations for external abdominal hernias.