Reply To: Researching surgeons – what questions to ask

[Good intentions]

quote ajm222:

The idea of watching and waiting panics me

Seems finding a great surgeon is critical and I want to do my homework and be prepared.

I don’t want things to progress any further (largely asymptomatic right now) but don’t want to get surgery on something that isn’t currently a huge problem if it means I risk more life-long pain or complications. But I also feel like this is a ticking time bomb

I felt similar to you when I found that I had a hernia. But mine was symptomatic and painful and was inhibiting my doing the things I liked to do. If I can be frank – a person would be a fool to get an asymptomatic hernia repaired, by any method, if it’s not getting worse and they are doing all of the things that they like to do.

It’s not a “bomb”. If it gets worse it will be fairly slowly. You’ll know that it;s getting worse. More stuff will push out and you’ll have a sizable bump and various other discomforts.

This is an interesting time for hernia repair. There’s been a very big push to get the new mesh products and techniques out to the masses (25% of the population is massive, marketwise). Everyone involved has been overlooking problems, and/or hoping that all of the change is only for the better. But, as you’ve seen, many of the professionals, from the device suppliers to the insurance companies, and many surgeons, are ignoring the signs that there are major problems. The cost, to the patient, physically, of a problematic hernia repair is huge, but the probability of it happening is smaller. They, the people I mentioned above, are paying for lower recurrence rates with the lives of the few that have problems.

Basically the odds of a successful repair (no recurrence) are better but the cost of complications is huge. It will completely change your entire life. That’s what you should be afraid of.

If I had just discovered a hernia and it was minor and asymptomatic I’d wait and see how things shake out. I don’t think that things can continue as they are, the law firms are lined up out there. When I was researching for mine, in 2014, just three years ago, I barely saw any law firms advertising for hernia mesh lawsuits. All I saw was transvaginal mesh law suits. Now the first search page for “hernia mesh” is almost all about hernia complication law suits. That’s in just three years. I’d wait.