Incisional Hernia Risk – now there’s an app for that

September 24, 2019

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at UPenn have developed an app designed to assess the risk of incisional hernias in a variety of abdominal procedures.  A previous analysis from UPenn shown that care related to incisional hernias cost the US Healthcare system $7.3 Billion per year.  Based upon a “big data” analysis of 30,000 patients, the team identified risk factors as well as procedures across multiple specialties likely to lead to an incisional hernia.  The app is designed to assign a real-time risk score to every patient scheduled for abdominal surgery at the point of care. This allows surgeons to consider incisional hernia risk as part of their pre-procedural planning and decision making.