Hernia Mesh: A Terrifying Health Disaster

Learn more about Hernia Mesh dangers here

Electing to have surgery isn't a decision that most people take lightly because they understand how risky any procedure can be. Medical errors are one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States, and most of those occur on the surgical side. On top of that, there are complications that can arise from anesthesia, the possibility of infections, and the amount of pain that patients understand is going to come with any surgical procedure.

Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio and attorney Robert Price discuss this.

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Electing to have surgery isn't a decision that most people take lightly because they understand how risky any procedure can be. Medical errors are one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States, and most of those occur on the surgical side. On top of that, there are complications that can arise from anesthesia, the possibility of infections, and the amount of pain that patients understand is going to come with any surgical procedure.

But in some cases surgery is the only option, and that's the case with hernia surgery. Each year hundreds of thousands of hernia surgeries are performed in the United States. There are numerous types of hernias, but the two most common are hernias, the ventral hernia and the inguinal hernia. The ventral hernia is a bulge that occurs in the abdominal wall muscle and the inguinal hernia is a hernia near the groin.

Many years ago though a product came out to market called the Kugel mesh patch. That hernia patch was a horrific product that was made of a plastic chemical polymer and had a ring around the patch that would break and it would just lodge in the patient's skin, their abdomen, their intestines. People suffered debilitating injuries and even died from this product. It turns out that it was only the tip of the iceberg. Since the Kugel mesh days, medical device companies have continued to produce devices that supposedly have innovative technologies that are nothing more than marketing ploys, that involve little to no science, and a whole lot of experimental medicine.

Thanks to the FDA's medical device clearance process, which is totally dysfunctional, these devices don't have to be independently verified about safety. For example, a company called Atrium released a product called Secure Mesh. The Secure Mesh was a mesh product that was coated with something called Omega 3 acids, basically fish oil goo. That's the best way to describe it. This goo caused severe reactions inside the human body and leads to infections, adhesions, and can even cause a person to die. On top of that, not only does the product employ a bogus design, but the company itself has been in trouble with the FDA for contamination issues surrounding the way it handles these products.

Then Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, who are always in the news for defective products these days, they make a product called Physiomesh, which is used to ... It's a chemical coating on top of its mesh. This chemical coating was touted to doctors as something that would help surgical wounds heal better. It turns out that it did just the opposite. It caused healing problems instead. The problems got so bad that they issued an urgent field safety notice voluntary recall in May of 2016.

The reason that the company issued this recall is because their mesh products were causing an array of problems. They included the mesh beginning to bind with other internal organs or the mesh was falling apart, causing the hernia to reopen and the patient being forced to have corrective surgery. In fact, these negative side effects became so severe that a clinical study on the product was actually terminated early because the product was so dangerous.

Joining me now to talk about the dangers of these mesh products is attorney Robert Price. Robert, tell us the purpose of these hernia mesh products. We think of hernia surgery as kind of a minor process, but these cases are anything but minor. What's happening? What is the need for this mesh design to begin with.