Abu Dhabi: A scientific team from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz University has succeeded in registering a global patent from the US Patent Office, following the creation of an artificial surgical mesh with innovative anti-bacterial properties.
The head of the scientific team, consultant obesity and minimally invasive surgery at the university, Dr. Abdul Malik bin Mohammed Salih Al Taf, explained that the surgical artificial mesh that can be used in surgeries to treat hernias in contaminated surgical areas.
“In some advanced hernia cases, surgical areas are contaminated with bacteria in the body tissues, which hinders the use of artificial mesh in these cases, so surgeons are forced to treat the hernia without using a mesh or to use a biological one that is less effective than the artificial mesh, but the innovative mesh secretes an antibiotic in the surrounding tissues for at least 14 days, which leads to getting rid of bacteria,” Dr Al Taf said.
Hernias have a high rate of recurrence, and surgeons often use surgical mesh to strengthen the hernia repair and reduce the rate of recurrence. Since the 1980s, there has been an increase in mesh-based hernia repairs—by 2000, non-mesh repairs represented less than 10 per cent of hernia repair techniques.
He indicated that the scientific team used nanotechnology to engineer the surgical artificial mesh and incorporate antibiotics into it, and then they were tested on experimental animals, where they proved effective.
The team that worked for four years at King Abdul Aziz University to reach this achievement included the team leader, Dr. Abdul Malik Al Taf, Dr. Siham Abdel Hadi, Dr. Faisal Abdel Hadi and Dr. Mahmoud Abdel Majid.
