Coatings for Permanent Meshes Used to Enhance Healing in Abdominal Hernia Repair: A Scoping Review.

Introduction: Hernia meshes are used to reduce recurrence and pain rates, but the rates are still high. This could be improved with coatings of the mesh. This scoping review aimed to provide an overview of mesh coatings used to promote healing in abdominal hernia repair and to report beneficial and unbeneficial effects.

Methods: We included human and animal studies with abdominal hernias that were repaired with non-commercially coated meshes. We searched Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane Central, LILACS, and CNKI without language constraints.

Results: Of 2933 identified studies, 58 were included: six studies had a total of 408 humans and 52 studies had 2679 animals. The median follow-up was 12 months (range 1-156), and 95% of the hernias were incisional. There were 44 different coatings which included platelet-rich plasma, mesenchymal stem cells, growth factors, vitamin E, collagen-derived products, various polysaccharides, silk proteins, chitosan, gentamycin, doxycycline, nitrofurantoin, titanium, and diamond-like carbon. Mesenchymal stem cells and platelet-rich plasma were the most researched. Mesenchymal stem cells notably reduced inflammation and foreign body reactions but did not impact other healing metrics. In contrast, platelet-rich plasma positively influenced tissue ingrowth, collagen deposition, and neovascularization and had varying effects on inflammation and foreign body reactions.

Conclusion: We identified 44 different mesh coatings and they showed varying results. Mesenchymal stem cells and platelet-rich plasma were the most studied, with the latter showing considerable promise in improving biomechanical properties in hernia repair. Further investigations are needed to ascertain their definitive use in humans.