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Fat in Inguinal Canal vs Hernia vs Cord Lipoma?
UhOh, this is based on personal experience, I am not not a doctor so take this info with that knowledge:
– I believe the advantage to knowing contents is mostly about surgical recommendations (timeline, mainly), and for diagnostics pertaining to the more unusual or ambiguous cases. Patient symptoms matter, as does the patient presentation. Most hernias of the groin are obvious, there is little ambiguity about them existing, and the precise contents are often irrelevant if the hernia is asymptomatic, minimally symptomatic, or the procedure is elective. It may impact a watch and wait vs repair recommendation, but if you’re going to have it repaired anyway it probably does not matter whether there’s fat or bowel in there. The sac contents are figured out definitively during surgery, either way, and as far as I know, the repair is usually the same too.
– Sometimes an Ultrasound can determine the size of a defect, and sometimes ultrasound can determine the contents as well
– CT and MRI can also sometimes determine what is contained within a hernia defect, because fat, inflammation, intestine, etc, look differently on imaging studies.
Both of those say “sometimes” because it may depend on who is reading and interpreting the radiology images. I personally have had mixed opinions about the exact same radiology, so the “sometimes” is pertinent to less-than-obvious cases.
Clear as mud, from a patient perspective anyway … right? :blink: 😆 😆 😆