Dr. Howie Levinson, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, discusses the complexities of Abdominal Wall Reconstruction and the need for new tools and devices.
My name is Howie Levinson. I'm a plastic and reconstructive surgeon and I work for a Centra medical group. So, abdominal wall reconstruction is a passion of mine. Um And what that is is basically putting people back together after recurring hernias or if there's cancers or trauma or something of that nature. Uh And, and so that's something I talk about nationally and internationally is how do you technically reconstruct the abdominal wall? How do you get the muscles back to where they belong and are functioning? And then how do you secure them in place? Uh We talked about uh my invention um for that purpose because the reality is and what we're seeing is when you have a patient as a recurrent hernia, you really run out of options pretty quickly about what to do and just repeating the same surgical procedures with slight modifications is not going to solve the problem. And that's what the data shows. So you really need new tools and devices. They have to be thoughtful about the techniques about how you perform them. Technical execution is really important. And so these are, you know, cases I've done for years at Duke I was getting all the referrals when I was at Duke and, and sort of bringing that know how and the technology here to the um to Eastern Virginia to help those patients um really in need. And how about the surgeons uh who need help with those complicated uh cases that they can do what they need to do this oncologic surgeons or transplant surgeons or vascular surgeons, things of that nature, you know, you can open a patient up and do what you need to do on the inside. But putting them back together is pretty important. And uh that's what we as plastic and reconstruction surgeons do really well.
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