As you may know, all previous inguinal hernia repairs had been performed without mesh until Lichtenstein, an American surgeon, reported the results of his new hernioplasty with mesh around the late 1980’s. At that time many surgeons were expecting a new repair method with a low recurrence, as in those days tissue repairs called ‘posterior wall repair’ showed very high recurrence rates of 10-30%.

Dr. Kang had performed hundreds of Bassini hernia repairs, a typical posterior wall repair, since 1987 when he became a general surgeon until he opened his hernia center, which was the first one in Korea, and began to perform mesh plug hernia repairs. He performed more than 5,000 mesh inguinal hernia repairs up until 2012 when he then started to develop the new non-mesh inguinal hernia repair method. He saw many patients suffering from chronic pain after mesh inguinal hernia operations, and eventually he successfully treated those patients with severe debilitating mesh pain by removing the mesh inserted by their General Hospital. That dramatic experience forced Dr. Kang to seek a new non-mesh hernia repair, and he began to develop the new repair method based on his past experience with Bassini repairs.

Because old fashioned tissue repairs, such as Bassini repair, have a very high recurrence rate, the most important criteria was to find a way to reduce this rate. After a year or so of development and improvements, the Kang Repair method, which is the new tissue repair, was completed. More than 6,000 Kang Repairs for inguinal hernias were performed by Dr. Kang for about five years from 2013 to 2017 and have wielded extremely positive results. Other surgeons at our hospital also did about 1,000 Kang Repairs and have yielded great results as well. Currently, we do a 100% non-mesh inguinal hernia repair no matter how large the hernia is, no matter how weak the tissue is and no matter how much the patient enjoys physical activity.

Dr. Kang and all of the surgeons at Gibbeum Hospital think Kang repair to be the best inguinal hernia repair method with confidence gained from our experiences. As our new non-mesh inguinal hernia repair becomes more widely known, Gibbeum Hospital is being recognized as the best hernia center in Korea and is becoming increasingly recognized overseas too. We will continue to refine our procedures further until we can arrive at a zero recurrence rate with zero complications. We hope our non-mesh hernia repair will help a lot of hernia patients now and in the future.