Laparoscopic repair for parastomal hernia with ongoing barbed suture followed by sandwich-technique: 'Sandwich-plus-technique'

Abstract

The incidence of parastomal hernias after a permanent stoma is between 50% and 80% depending on the type of stoma, the definition of the hernia (clinical or radiological), and the length of the follow-up. Surgical therapy is complex and involves several techniques with different recurrence rates. We present three cases where we have closed the hernia gap with continuous, non-resorbable, self-retaining sutures with subsequent use of the sandwich technique ('Sandwich-plus-technique'). There were pronounced parastomal hernias in three female patients (mean age was 72 years and the range was 63–78 years) with permanent colostomata. After laparoscopic adhesiolysis, the closure of the hernia defect was completed with ongoing, barbed non-resorbable 1-0 sutures (polybutester) followed by the sandwich technique. There were no intraoperative complications and currently no clinical or radiological evidence for recurrences of the parastomal hernia. Closure of the hernia gap leads to the additional reconstruction of the lateral abdominal wall, resulting in a larger contact surface for integration of the keyhole mesh and thus prior to implantation of the Sugarbaker mesh. The laparoscopic augmentation of large parastomal hernias using the 'Sandwich-plus-technique' is technically complex but achieves very good results in our case series. Further studies and long-term results should prove that the low recurrence rate of the sandwich technique can be further reduced.

Keywords

• Barbed suture
• parastomal hernia
• sandwich-plus-technique