When you talk about hernias, there are various classes of hernias aside from where they might be located. Hernias can either be congenital (meaning that you were born with it), they can be acquired (meaning that you developed it possibly because of strenuous activity, maybe you were lifting weights or lifting something heavy), or they can be a result of a previous incision. With those three hernias, it really doesn't matter which type it is because the repairs are generally all the same in terms of how we fix these hernias. Many of the hernias are either fixed primarily - which means we just close it with sutures and that's what we do for small hernias. For larger hernias, we try to close up that hole but in addition, we reinforce that repair with a piece of mesh, which is generally a piece of woven plastic, which we call polypropylene.