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3 Years since surgery
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I don’t see how you could prevent something like this from happening to you by research. You went to someone who had good reviews and success stories. He was a very experienced surgeon, and clearly competent overall. You could dig up a couple of bad cases, but that’s the case with all surgeons, even the very best – they all have some bad cases. Clearly, he wasn’t messing up on a large scale. He had a private practice, and would have been out of business from lawsuits (even in California) if he had been harming people left and right.
The main lesson I learn is to take surgery very seriously. The most effective way to avoid this kind of trouble is simply to avoid surgery. Sometimes you have no choice but to have surgery, and I don’t know if that was the case with you or not, but the bar for pulling the trigger on surgery should be set very high.
There are two aspects to this: really needing it, and having a high level of confidence that surgery can actually cure the problem. Then you pick one of the best surgeons you can for the procedure, but things can still go haywire, so avoidance of the whole thing altogether (if possible) is truly the best protection.
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Hey AJM sorry for the delay in reply my car got stolen last week and I had to deal with that for a few days, I’ll try to summarize the situation here so its clear.
5 years ago while teaching a class I heard a cracking sound in my groin followed by a sharp pain that then went away in a couple of hours. I then started to have a continuous ache/pain in my groin. I had an MRI done that didn’t show anything. I had a dynamic ultrasound that found my adductor tendon was partially torn at its insertion but was not painful to the touch and it wasn’t where I was feeling the pain. They couldn’t find anything else in abdominal tissues. They did a diagnostic injection nerve block on the ilioinguinal nerve and I got a small amount of relief but not completely. In retrospect It wasn’t the nerve but at the time I needed to get back to dancing asap as I had just gotten my artist visa and the dance agency sponsoring me was waiting on me. So my local doctors decided to remove part of my ilioinguinal nerve on the right side hoping that it would give me relief and that whatever else that might’ve been going on would just heal naturally since it wasn’t big enough to be found on imaging and left a gore-tex non-porous mesh over the canal, under the external oblique to “strengthen” the area. They said they routinely did this to Olympic athletes and some hockey players. The whole thing lasted less than 25 minutes outpatient and I walked out of the hospital.
This was the only surgery I had before Dr. Brown. My inguinal floor was not touched since it wasn’t torn, the external oblique was closed the same way it was opened. No loss of strength or effect on my core from that surgery, just some soreness/tightness near the scar that healed in a couple of days. My left side was healthy at the time so no previous surgery there. I went on to dance for 2.5 years full-time after that. I had pain but at least my muscles were functional.
Then 2.5 years later I had Dr. Brown’s surgery bilaterally. He did the same surgery bilaterally the only difference being that when he did the right side, he opened the external oblique and the gore-tex mesh was still sitting there so he just pulled it out. It hadn’t scarred and no muscle tissue had grown on it due to the nature of the material it was just sitting there over the canal. Came out as clean as it went in, it didn’t need to be carved out of me with a bunch of bloody tissue attached to it like the other mesh horror stories you see. Dr. Brown himself said it was his first time seeing a non-porous mesh. My local doctors said they had put in that type of mesh specifically so that it didn’t adhere to anything and cause any issues. It was also his fire time seeing a mesh that wasn’t on the inguinal floor but rather was over the inguinal canal. I can send you a picture of the mesh after it was taken out if you want it looks like a piece of white cardboard there’s nothing to it.
And yes, when I agreed to surgery Dr. Brown said my left side (the one that did not have previous surgery) would be back to 100%. It still had full strength it was just starting to get injured and I wanted to catch it before it got bad. Obviously that was a mistake.
He said the right side should be 100% as well but could be as low as 80% since I had previous surgery. He did not say there was a chance it wouldn’t be success or that I would have severe weakness/tension release he just said there was a possibility that the right side could have either residual pain and only be at 80% which was an acceptable risk to me.Feel free to DM me if you have specific questions you’d like to know
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Pinto, respectfully please refrain from replying to me or my threads again. You are making an unbelievable amount of assumptions and insinuations despite not knowing me and not bringing anything useful of constructive to the table and quite frankly you come off as condescending. I do not see why you linger on these forums. This isn’t interesting drama for you to feed on. I do not owe you anything and don’t ever ask me to “come clean” again like I am making stuff up.
I did not pursue litigation at any point for my own reasons. For the last 3 years I have barely been able to stay alive. I barely have enough energy to get through each day. I barely sleep. I seriously contemplated suicide for the past year and still am contemplating it daily. For me living in Canada, the thought of pursuing a legal case in California seems like a mountain and not where I wanted to put the small amount of energy and resources I have. I don’t trust the system. The doctors I have consulted so far don’t know what to do with me or are uninterested – only 1 was willing to say out right that Dr. Brown hurt me and brought up the legal aspect of it because these doctors are afraid to hold each other accountable out loud. The reason why so many patients are harmed in this god damned industry is because all the other doctors are complicit in staying silent when they see a doctor who keeps getting “bad cases”. I know of at least 4 other people who ended up exactly like me after Dr. Brown. Endless revision surgeries, new issues they never had, bouncing from surgeon to surgeon and getting worse and worse. Those are just the ones I know of. Dr. Meyers has done surgery on many Dr. Brown patients – he knows his surgery doesn’t work especially not on athletes and makes patients worse but he has never sounded the alarm. Why? Because its a money funnel for his business. He got new patients to operate on every time Dr. Brown did a “sports hernia” surgery.
I’m just trying to get my life back. Nothing I say or do against Dr. Brown who is now retired will undo this nightmare so the small amount of energy I have I’m trying to find help rather than seeking revenge or compensation. I don’t know how you can look at me before and after and say that its suspicious. I walked in with a normal core, full tension, rehearsing 8 hours a day as a pro dancer and I walked out with no tension in my groin/core and now have oblique muscles that do not work, very clear muscle atrophy, and so many issues that I can’t count them all.
Regardless of my situation, any human being that walks into a surgery where the Dr tells him that he will recover in max 3 months, that he will have full abdominal function and normal tension and walks out the way I do with 10+ new issues they did not have before is unjustifiable. I did not gain a single thing from that surgery, its like I volunteered to go get harmed and lost muscle/body functions in the process.
I don’t care if you believe me or not or if you would have done things differently. If you’re not trying to help or know of a doctor that would care to help then please refrain from replying or engaging with me. I need help not judgement.
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Sorry it posted my reply before I finished answering and wouldn’t let me edit – you are correct the surgeons I consulted so far have no idea whats going on. To be honest the feeling I have gotten from most surgeons is that they see me as “damaged goods” and aren’t very eager to dive into what is happening to me. I totally understand that this now falls into the revision-surgery and is far more complex but I have struggled to find someone who is even remotely interested in figuring it out with me. Not to take anything away from the surgeons I’ve consulted its just been a very uphill and lonely road trying to find help.
Dr. Krpata is the only one who suggested the nerves might play a role but I strongly disagree as I have stated previously I made Dr. Brown write in the consent form that no nerves were to be harmed or touched in any way and I believe he didn’t cut any.
Physically I feel like I have 3/4 of an external oblique vertically. Meaning that prior to this surgery, when I flexed my core you could see my obliques flare up/flex through the entire length from top to bottom. Now I try to flex and the muscle tries to flex but nothing moves/goes up past the beginning of the scar on each side. It doesn’t meet any resistance or anchoring it just tries to flex and then caves in with weakness. Its hard to describe. Its like he cut off/separated a chunk of my external oblique aponeurosis from the rest of the structure.
Another user on here a year ago said that he avoided surgery with Dr. Brown because he “free’d the fascia” during his procedure. I never understood what he meant by that but to me for the spermatic cord to be under the skin at the end of the surgery and to have 2 separate leaves overlapping he had to separate/carve out parts of the external oblique. That’s the only theory I have at the moment
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by PeterC.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
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Because the last 3 steps of the surgery on each side were;
1. The superior leaf of the external oblique was brought over the inferior leaf and sutured to the inguinal ligament
2. The spermatic cord was released back to the subcutaneous tissues (released I’m assuming from the penrose drain that was pulling it to the side while he was doing the “repair”)
3. The skin was closed. Needle count was good. Patient tolerated the procedure well with no complications.
From my understanding the canal on each side is no longer a canal its just a superposition of transversalis fascia – inferior external oblique leaf sutured to it – superior external oblique leaf pulled over that and sutured to the inguinal ligament.
There’s a guy in a city 2 hours from me that had the same repair done by Dr. Brown and last time I spoke to him (well over a year ago) he was on his 7th revision surgery for this. Guy is not even an athlete just a regular guy and he said one of the worst feelings from this surgery was the spermatic cord being under the skin and he tried to get it put back under the external oblique by Dr. Brown himself and he almost lost his testicle because he closed it too tight or something a few weeks out of the surgery his testicle started shrinking and he had to fly back and get emergency surgery to address it.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by PeterC.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
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Hey AJM,
I have bilateral testicular pain now had none previously. Its on and off aching Its hard to describe but its there every day. Its not sharp pain as if a nerve were damaged, more of and ache/at time soreness. The entire area is sore/aching pretty much at all times. Theres 1 picture of the surgery where there seems to be some kind of cut into the spermatic cord as if something had been cut from it but I have no idea why and its not mentioned anywhere in the op report. No surgeons afterwards said anything about this either, only one of them pointed it out on the pictures but didn’t say more.
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Hi Pinto,
I’m not sure I understand your question. At no point did I ever have a hernia. I had thinning and partial tearing of the inguinal floor which is common in sports hernias/athletes. At no point did I have a traditional hernia with intestinal contents bulging anywhere inside of me. I was still doing 8 hour rehearsals regularly just with a lot of pain. Dr. Brown did extensive palpation when I first consulted and there was no hernia to be found anywhere.
2. I have no idea if the steps are considered standard. It should not be the patient’s responsibility to become a doctor and study whether or not the doctor is doing standard/appropriate steps. I was a pro dancer which he knew, he was a doctor advertising that his main practice was to work with pro athletes for sports hernias/overuse injuries in the groin. After I asked all the important questions like will it affect how my body looks, how my muscles activate or are able to function and he reassured me of everything without any doubt – I trusted him and went on with the surgery. To be frank I did not care at that moment what the exact steps were I trusted that he knew what he was doing the same way people trust me when I judge a competition or teach a class. I explicitly said I am very holistic with my body and for him to do the absolute minimum possible that I would rather have surgery again than to have something done to me that is too extreme and causes irreversible damage/weakness. From my understanding he was going to repair the floor in a way that would not cause weakness and the only risk was some tightness and that it could tear again as I go back to work which I was okay with. I also had the understanding that he would close the external oblique whole and that the spermatic cord would be in the canal after the surgery. At no point did he mention that he would close the external oblique in 2 different overlapping sections and leave the spermatic cord under the skin. I read from another sports doctor a few years back that he regularly just tightens the inguinal floor of athletes that have this surgery and then just closes everything normally and they go back to sport. This is what I thought was going to happen to be frank. He also said that the outline on his website was a general one but that if he found less damage once operating he would adjust the surgery to my needs and only do what is necessary. When he first assessed me he palpated my entire groin and said I did not have conjoint tendon damage nor inguinal ligament damage/injury and gave off a very confident feeling that it was not a big deal and that it was nothing that he couldn’t fix. Hope this gives you a better explanation of my mindset going into it.
When I consulted afterwards the main points that doctors stumbled on were;
1. Why did he slice open the floor in its entirety from the conjoint tendon all the way to the epigastric artery if only a small part was thinning/tearing. One doctor was particularly concerned about the amount of damage he did here he said “you’re so young..you have so much life ahead of you why would he do that”. Again I don’t have a way to gauge if this is normal or not I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal until this doctor pointed it out to me.
2. Why did he not just close the external oblique back whole once the floor was repaired instead of developing it superiorly and inferiorly to then overlap the parts he just created. They said they can’t understand why he wouldn’t just close it whole.
3. Nobody has been able to tell me how its possible to have the spermatic cord just under the skin and no longer in the canal or why it was done – I’m guessing without causing unnecessary structural damage.
4. Because I have structural weakness that spans across my entire core and is affecting multiple systems, they don’t know if he did any additional cutting. One surgeon said it could be nerve related but I highly doubt it the one saving grace I have is that I made him write in the consent form that he would absolutely not cut any nerve under any circumstance. I’ve had a few other patients of his send me operative reports where in the middle of surgery he started cutting their nerves even though they had not approved or discussed any of this prior to their surgery. He was regularly making decisions on the go like this even if the patients were not diagnosed with a nerve issue apparently. My operative report mentions that he identified all the nerves and that they were all fine/he did not touch them and the pictures of the surgeries match the report here all the nerves seem healthy.
I know he lied at one part in at least one part of the operative report. When I first consulted him, my left side (the less injured one) did not have any inguinal floor damage/pain. My scans showed that it only had external oblique tearing near the external ring and Dr. Brown agreed with this on palpation. He said that side was an easy fix (you just close the tear) and it would only be a 6 weeks recovery. When I woke up from surgery he had done the same procedure as he did on the right where he sliced open the inguinal floor in its entirety and wrote in the op report that the floor had “destruction” but nothing suggested that not even his own pictures of the surgery. One doctor said his pictures do not confirm it at all and that they would not hold in court if I chose to go that route. That’s the only part of the report where I know he actively lied. For my right side where the floor was actually thinning/torn he had pictures to show the damage before slicing it open and the wording was specific in the report. But for the left side he does not show any damage and the only picture is the one of the floor sliced open after he cut it open despite no diagnostic of any damage on that side.
All I know is I woke up from surgery and it seemed like all the strength/tension from my groin was completely gone. This is too much information but I actually pooped myself a bit in the hotel the first two days. I could not control my butt? sphincter?. I thought it was from the surgery maybe my body was just reacting to it but to this day I can’t fully control it, it never went back to normal. It shoots out out of me I can feel my sphincter not being under normal tension. For the week following surgery I felt and watched my core spasm throughout the days and slowly release all the tension I had built across my core for my entire adult life. The entire side of my body released – my lats – all the way up and my back – everything released. My back got so tight/so painful from not having any core tension/strength I could not bend forward or lift anything and I still can’t to this day properly lift anything heavy or bend without back discomfort. Something about protagonist/antagonist muscle groups. I’ve never had this happen in any previous surgery. I have friends with severe abdominal surgeries with unbelievably big scars/trauma and their cores aren’t deformed/weak there’s just a big (or multiple in some cases) scar(s) there. For this type of release to happen something had to be structurally released from its origin or altered. The main thing I noticed after surgery is how it felt like I did not have a groin anymore. It feels like everything below the start of the scar on each side is gone. Absolutely zero tissue tension or activation. I thought this would come back as I try to rehab but it hasn’t. Its incredible uncomfortable to walk and as I have specified many times before my gait is incredibly unstable. My knees are completely destroyed since the surgery as there is nothing stabilizing my hips when I walk and my knees are taking the hit from every single step being different I’m assuming. I don’t have normal pelvic stability and no amount of pelvic tilts or rehab is changing anything. When I sneeze instead of the different layers of my abdominal wall tensing up as one big unit to resist the pressure from sneezing, I see my different core muscles bend in different directions trying to disperse the tension/pressure created from the sneeze.
Hope that answers your questions and sorry for the wall of text its hard for me to organize all the information in a concise manner.
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Hey David I did watch the video just now and I see what you are saying – while Desarda did not create flaps by cutting horizontally he still seems to a serious bit of cutting and separation. Honestly made me a little nauseous – it is very hard for me to imagine that Desarda’s patient in that video went back to having normal core/groin function. Can he live with it? Probably. Does he have normal function? I highly doubt it.
In any case I don’t know what to make of seeing his procedure. All I know is I went into Dr. Brown’s surgery with a rock solid core/groin to the point where when they did a diagnostic injection to me a few years ago the guy had to physically push the needle quite a bit and it loudly popped when it finally went through my tissues. Now everything is just jello. The separation between my rectus muscles, my groin, my obliques, etc. All jello.
You know that V shape that every man has at the bottom of your core? I dont have that anymore. Its just one flat surface. from side to side. No edges, nothing.
I’m thinking its the external oblique aponeurosis being cut, developed into leaves and overlapped because from the few people I’ve consulted that seems to be the more “odd” step in the surgery. But maybe its from slicing open the entire inguinal floor and then “repairing” that by pulling the conjoint tendon to the shelving edge of the inguinal ligament? He says this step “reconstructs” the conjoint tendon (that was not injured or weak at any point) – which means it was destroyed in the process of slicing open the inguinal floor and could be the reason why my abs completely released? Since the internal oblique and transversalis both anchor into the conjoint tendon?
In any case I don’t see how I get out of this or ever get a functioning core again. I was told “the only risk is that it might tear and need to be repaired again”. At no point was I told “by the way your entire core will release and never be able to tense up or be flexed again. You will have no groin strength either and everything will be limp and loose”.
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One part (the one on the side of the inguinal ligament) is sutured down onto the tranversalis
The other half (on the side of the rest of your core) is then pulled across that and sutured to the inguinal ligament – overlapping the first half.
This is why he creates flaps. If he were to just open it along the fibers and do nothing else he cannot overlap anything he would have to close it whole again at the end of the procedure. My assumption is that he creates flaps to overlap them to “strengthen the repair” because in his Western Medicine mind he thinks that thats stronger than having the tissue be whole and functional.
I still don’t understand where the gap is to let the spermatic cord under the skin I’ve looked at endless sketches and images of anatomy online, I don’t understand where the gap even from his operation.
I also would like to add that when consulting, I did not understand this is what he was going to do. His website and himself emphasized that every person is different and that he tailors the procedure to each patient’s needs. I specifically asked “are you going to be modifying my anatomy to a point where muscle groups or structures wont work anymore” and he said “no everything will work as intended and I will close everything properly”.
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Yes, but it’s not nearly as well studied as the classic techniques.
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What did he do with the remainder of the external oblique aponeurosis when closing up at the end of the surgery?
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Hey David,
I don’t have to post my op report. When Dr. Brown closed his practice last year he sold his marketing website (sportshernia.com) to another doctor who is reusing literally everything word for word down to the operation. You can find the steps listed here https://www.sportshernia.com/sports-hernia-approach/sports-hernia-options-operation/
The only step he doesn’t specify on the website is how the “leaves” of the external oblique come to be. He goes from “opening the external oblique aponeurosis to the level of the internal inguinal ring” and then suddenly he is overlapping leaves in the finals steps. He has to create those leaves somehow to be able to overlap them as 2 separate entities. In the op report he specifies he cut superiorly and inferiorly to create those leaves/flaps.
I did not have a hernia repair since I never had a hernia. What I had was a sports hernia – meaning I had fiber separation tearing of the external oblique aponeurosis due to overuse and I had inguinal floor thinning/tearing from overuse again.
Dr. Brown operated the website “SPORTSHERNIA.COM” and advertised himself as someone who worked with professional athletes from every major sports association and treated sports hernias as his main practice. Funny enough I cannot find a single patient of his sports hernia practice that is okay or recovered/got better after his surgery.
He even went as far as advertising it to be safe for young children. Can you imagine? And now we have another doctor who purchased the website from him who is continuing these atrocities.
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Hey David,
He did not try to repair a hernia there were no hernias.
Here’s what he did
1. He sliced open my external oblique aponeurosis from the external inguinal ring to the level of the internal inguinal ring (complete destruction for absolutely no reason).
2. He moved the spermatic cord out of the way
3. He sliced open the inguinal floor from the conjoint tendon all the way to the inferior epigastric artery (again complete destruction when all I had was thinning/small tearing in the floor that could barely be picked up on dynamic ultrasound).
4. He then sutured the conjoint tendon itself to the shelving portion of the inguinal ligament
5. Then instead of putting the spermatic cord back and closing the external oblique, he then cut against the fibers of the external oblique aponeurosis superiorly and inferiorly on each side to create “leaves” (flaps really).
6. He sutured the flap originating from the side of the inguinal ligament to the tranversalis fascia to “completely close the inguinal canal”.
7. He brought the other leaf over all of this and suture it to the inguinal ligament.
8. He left the spermatic cord over all of this (not in Canal anymore) directly under the skin and then closed the skin.
Most surgeons who I showed my operative report to just made the biggest eyes possible and don’t understand how the spermatic cord is just directly under my skin. They don’t understand or can’t explain to me how its anatomically possible.
Anyways he made sure to do the absolute most destruction/damage so that nobody else can ever revert back the procedure it seems.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by PeterC.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
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He didn’t just screw up he straight up mutilated me. I’ve had a few doctors try to excuse this by saying “you know every surgeon has a bad case” – well yes surgeons have a bad case here and there because they are complicated. What was complicated about me being in peak shape, no body fat, ultra conditioned individual with no hernia? This isn’t a “every surgeon has a bad case” this is a “this person had no business being a doctor he was a fraud and should be in jail” situation.
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hey I appreciate your reply.
There’s another aspect you are missing out. Sometimes you go into surgery thinking that at least the doctor has enough knowledge/respect that he will not cause more damage. If he cannot help you then at the very minimum he won’t cause more harm.
I very very very clearly asked Dr. Brown to please not cause damage where there wasn’t any, to not release any structure in its entirety and I asked if there was any risk if he would cause more harm than good.
He said there is absolutely no way he will hurt me or cause more damage. I really asked over and over for all the reassurances possible and ultimately it didn’t matter he did the most damage he possibly could.
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