Among the complications after hernia surgery, MILIHR is one of the most difficult to deal with, which presents a severe challenge to surgeons. At the same time, it will also cause a lot of mental and physical pain to the patients, and greatly increase the economic burden. Therefore, how to treat MILIHR and make patients recover as soon as possible is worth more discussion. The factors leading to mesh infection are various, and the patient's own factors may increase the risk of mesh infection, including history of infection, obesity, smoking, malnutrition, incarcerated hernia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, tumor, steroid use, poor cardiopulmonary function and low immune function [25-30]. In addition, other factors include unqualified instrument disinfection, long operation time, large foreign body implantation, fluid accumulation around the mesh or repeated suction of scrotal seroma, other contaminated operations, type of mesh are the risk factors for patch infection [31-34]. In this study, 43.24% of the patients had the risk factors reported above. In case 1, we found that there was medical glue in the infection foci, and in case 2, we found that the infection foci were the residual hernia sac surrounding pus. Therefore, we believed that the use of medical glue and the residual hernia sac could also become the risk factors for MILIHR.
Literatures reports the pore diameter of the mesh and the fiber structure may increase the rate of mesh infection. The anti-infection ability of the polypropylene mesh with single strand fiber structure (pore diameter > 75 μm) is better than that of the polytetrafluoroethylene mesh with multi strand fiber structure (pore diameter < 10 μm). Polypropylene mesh with large aperture, allow through the fiber mother cell. However, the polytetrafluoroethylene can only allow bacteria to mesh and phagocytes can't through the mesh. In this study, due to limited data, although the difference between mesh type and MILIHR cannot be explained, it is worth further study.
The diagnosis of MILIHR can be confirmed by medical history, imaging examination and bacterial biological culture. However, the clinical manifestations of mesh infection varied from local swelling, pain and mass in the inguinal region in the early time to chronic inflammatory sinus tract in the later period. Because of the depth of the patch infection after laparoscopic surgery, early diagnosis is not easy. Early symptoms of swelling, pain tends to be considered for surgical trauma, postoperative complications of chronic pain, even suspected of infection, the majority of patients also only application in early treatment, pain killer, antibiotics and other conservative treatment, this leads to the majority of patients do not have access to heal, illness gradually increase to the chronic course [35], so the majority of patients had longer duration of MILIHR. In this study, according to limited statistical data, 46.7% (7/15) of the patients had infection duration longer than 3 months.
The most common infection bacteria of mesh infection is Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus, followed by gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli [24.34.36].In this study, bacteria of MILIHR mainly followed by Staphylococcus (41.18%), Escherichia coli (14.71%), Pseudomonas (14.71%), similar to the literature, but also contains the mesh 2 cases caused by a fungus infection, in addition, there are 2 cases no bacterial growth, by combining with pathologic examination, they were diagnosed with rejection, considering of the infection. Although there was no bacterial infection, the clinical symptoms of pseudoinfection were the same as those of genuine infection, and the radical treatment was to remove the mesh.
The most reliable way to treat MILIHR is to remove the patch completely. Mesh infection through three steps including bacterial adhesion, proliferation and the formation of biofilm [25],mesh as a foreign body reduces the threshold of bacteria required for infection. The biofilm formed by bacterial adhesion to the patch can enhance the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and evade host immune function, this layer of biofilm can form a protective barrier, hinder antibiotics through makes it difficult to treat infection, often antimicrobial treatment effect is not ideal [34].Therefore, the systemic application of antibiotics, local dressing change, incision irrigation, negative pressure drainage and other conservative treatments makes the treatment of mesh infection very difficult, and often increases the treatment time of patients. Only when the infected mesh is removed can the cure be achieved. Moreover, incomplete mesh removal can lead to multiple surgeries for the recurrence of infection [10,37,38]. In this study, only 1 case of fungal infection was cured by conservative treatment, and the remaining 33 cases were healed by taking out the mesh. Therefore, the most reliable method to treat MILIHR is to remove the patch timely and completely.
The choice of surgical treatment should maximize the benefits of the patients. Traditional surgery is a common method to remove the mesh, which is reached to the infection level through layer by layer of free tissue. However, laparoscopic hernia repair is performed by placing the mesh in the preperitoneal space through the posterior approach, which means that multiple layers of healthy tissue can be destroyed by open surgery before the infection can be reached [24]. In the study, the ratio of laparoscopy to traditional surgery was 2:1,but we suggest that laparoscopic mesh removal should be selected. On the one hand, the amplification effect of laparoscopy is conducive to the complete removal of the mesh and the identification of important anatomical structures. On the other hand, it provides a simple and feasible anterior approach for reoperation of hernia recurrence after mesh removal.