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Still not healed after 1yr Urachal Cyst surgery
Hello, I know this is a hernia forum and technically my surgery was for a urachal cyst and not a hernia but I can’t find help anywhere and I am told that the surgery is very similar. I am hoping someone out there can help. Here is my situation. I am a healthy 45 year old male in good shape with no health issues. About a year ago I developed a urachall cyst that needed to be removed surgically. The wound healed in about a month (or so I thought), however, the wound was infected and they ended up draining out all the infection and giving me antibiotics. In a few weeks, I healed up. Several months later, the wound opened up and started draining. They gave me another surgery which removed excess scar tissue that was caused by the infection.
The wound healed up again in a month and a half – but not all the way. It just kept leaking serous fluid and would not close. They went in again and removed all the tissue. I healed up again in about a month and a half but was basically in the same situation. I really have no pain, and everything looks fine other than the fact that the wound will not close up all the way and continues to leak serous fluid. At this point they are treating me with silver nitrate to burn off hypergranulation tissue every couple of weeks. The surgeon tells me she has no idea why I won’t heal. Now I am looking elsewhere (the web) for answers. Does anyone know what this could be or how I can heal myself? Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you!
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7 Replies
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quote zenacity:Hi – Just wanted to update everyone. Thanks for all of your input. So I had another surgery 3 weeks ago. This was a laparoscopic exploratory surgery to get in there and determine the root cause. Basically they went in to my abdomen by making 3 additional incisions on the right side. This was to allow the camera and tools to be inserted. Once they got in there, they had to cut away part of my omentum and remove a bunch of scar tissue. After they removed the scar tissue, they found a small area of calcium deposit which seemed to cause an abscess to form. They removed the calcium deposit as well as the abscess and the infected tissue. Then they sewed me all back up. I am still healing from the surgery and now I have more pain on the new incision sites. They tell me that this was the problem and I should heal up soon. I’ll let you know how it goes!This is great information. Thanks for the follow-up on your case, let us know how you feel as healing progresses! Best of luck!
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Hi – Just wanted to update everyone. Thanks for all of your input. So I had another surgery 3 weeks ago. This was a laparoscopic exploratory surgery to get in there and determine the root cause. Basically they went in to my abdomen by making 3 additional incisions on the right side. This was to allow the camera and tools to be inserted. Once they got in there, they had to cut away part of my omentum and remove a bunch of scar tissue. After they removed the scar tissue, they found a small area of calcium deposit which seemed to cause an abscess to form. They removed the calcium deposit as well as the abscess and the infected tissue. Then they sewed me all back up. I am still healing from the surgery and now I have more pain on the new incision sites. They tell me that this was the problem and I should heal up soon. I’ll let you know how it goes!
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I would agree with [USER=”2029″]Good intentions[/USER] and consider visiting a specialized wound care clinic in your area, as expertise can make a difference for nearly all situations.
Best of luck and keep us updated on your case.
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I don’t know a lot about wound healing but I would guess that the hypergranulation is a response, not a cause.
Do you have your medical records? You can learn a lot even if you’re not an expert. There might be something there about suture materials, method of surgery, etc. that will tell you or someone on the forum something.
One thing that I’ve learned about education is that when you get out you’re just a generalist, not an expert. They can only teach the basics within the relatively short amount of time that a person spends in coursework. Expertise comes from focusing and working in a certain field for a lengthy period of time. You should probably move on from the expert in urachal cyst surgery to an expert in difficult wound healing problems.
Another thing that I’ve learned is that when problems happen, the original surgeon might spend too much time trying to solve the problem themselves rather than admitting it’s beyond their level. It’s a big problem in hernia repair with mesh. The people that implant it often don’t know how to deal with the problems, or don’t want to.
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Thanks for your responses. I have not visited a wound care clinic yet. As far as packing the wound, yes – every time they did a surgery I packed the wound until it healed. For some reason there seems to be hypergranulated tissue all the way down the tunnel to the abdominal wall. It’s a very small tunnel but this hypergranulated tissue seems to be preventing the tunnel from closing up. The keep burning it off every couple of weeks with silver nitrate but it just keeps coming back.
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Have you visited a wound care clinic specifically? I wonder if they’d have any different ideas?
Did you ever have to pack the wound to let it heal from the inside out?
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Two clinics that seem to have much experience in that area are OHSU, in Oregon, and the Carolinas Healthcare group, in North Carolina. Dr. Martindale and Dr. Heniford. Abdominal wall reconstruction is the topic you want to focus on, I think. The University of Tennessee Health Science Center also seems to have a focus in that area. Dr. Voller.
This video is scary but gives some idea of how far they can go to solve a problem. Find an expert soon, I’d say, and don’t feel bad getting a second opinion. And don’t spend too much time trying to make insurance work for you. Our compartmentalized insurance system keeps people from finding the specialists that they need.
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