The unified theory of hernia formation.

The perusal of surgical journals suggests that the etiology and the treatment of hernias are still based on the understanding of a simple mechanical defect, an idiopathic happenstance requiring a reliable hernia repair, preferably with a prosthetic mesh or device. The need for additional elucidation does not constitute an aim that is pervasive in the surgical community or with the corporate manufacturers of surgical implements. This may well be because surgeons are not trained scientists and laboratory workers. Fortunately, several disciplines are injecting a healthy dose of curiosity matched by ingenuity. Among these contributors, we can count anatomists, electron microscopists, biochemists, organic chemists, pathologists, geneticists, and molecular biologists, who have looked at collagen, enzymes, tobacco smoke, congenital diseases, and chromosomal defects. Every aspect of the researchers' work has identified and converged onto a final common organ: collagen. It is the pathological changes in collagen that set the stage for the development of a hernia. The multiple theories on mechanisms of hernia formation have, at last, melded into one single Unified Theory of hernia formation.