Bilateral Shouldice with Dr. Conze

[pinto]

You’ve gotten over the worst of it and seem to be making good progress though incremental. I hope the discomfort is becoming manageable. I salute you for taking the challenge and once you’re able to leave all this behind, you gonna feel fantastic. Focus on that forward. BTW, you referred to your surgeon as enigmatic. He’s not very forthcoming about your condition or the surgery? Or is that his reputed disposition? Good luck with everything. I hope you’re pain free soon.

[Oceanic]

In hindsight I wish I’d had one side done and waited 6 weeks then gone back for the other side, double shouldice is a lot trauma. I only knew about the right side hernia although was getting testicle pain on the left but with no lump, Dr.Conze found a small direct hernia on the left side with the Ultrasound and by sticking his finger up my inguinal canal.

My right side feels great and is healing nicely but the left side is causing a lot of tension and discomfort, I can only walk short distances before needing to sit down. I can extend my range a little each day though, I’m hoping it just may be a long road of my tissues stretching and remodeling to accomodate the new tension, the key is movement so I’m doing gentle stretching and as much walking as possible, I managed 10,000 steps yesterday over the whole day broken up into segments.

The Clinic in Munich is very nice, the operating theatre is on the same floor and they kept me in over night for observation, I stayed in a Hotel virtually next door for 3 more nights before flying home with the help of some strong painkillers.

Everyone including Dr.Conze speaks excellent English, he gets a lot of international visitors I think. I had local anesthetic and sedation, didn’t know a thing about it, just woke up in the recovery room and it was all done. Anaesthetist and Nursing care was all top notch. Time from first contact to surgery was about a month, I travelled out in a reasonable anmount of discomfort so it was a bit of a mental challenge, the pain I have now is worse than the hernias but I still have a better sense of well being as my body now feels like it doesnt have bits protruding out of it that should be on the inside.

I’ll try and post weekly updates, I learnt a lot from this forums so it’s the least I can do if my ramblings help someone else here.

Lastly in case this helps anyone I’m taking BPC-157 and TB-500 peptides which are known to drastically increase/improve healing, be aware of options like this as when you’re older you don’t heal like you do when you were in your teens, these peptides will make your recovery much faster and more complete. This isn’t medical advice, do you’re own research and decide for yourself. Some specialist Doctors in the US can be found that prescribe peptides like these.

[William Bryant]

Thanks for the update Oceanic, much appreciated as there isn’t much discussion or feedback re Dr Conze or many of the other Germans on the forum as Good Intentions says.

I hope things improve for you. Maybe the fact both sides were repaired is why there is more pain. It can be a long healing process after such surgery so every reason tomhope it gets better and better. Please if you can keep us updated. Many thanks.

[Good intentions]

Good luck Oceanic. Could you describe the experience in broader terms? Where you stayed, the facilities, languages spoken, type of anesthetic used, any notes from the operation?

Also, when you say you could barely walk, what type of pain were you experiencing? Not much is known about Dr. Conze’s work, on the forum.

[Watchful]

That’s a bit alarming and unexpected… I hope you recover completely soon. What did Dr. Conze say?

[MarkT]

Oh, just read Dr. Kang’s post…

It’s nice that a rather small % have problematic pain, but that more than 16% have ‘pain that not possible to ignore’ is indeed concerning and not all that different from what other studies are finding.

It will be interesting to see longer term data since his timeframes are inherently short.

In his potential defence, more nuanced data could be extremely helpful. He really should break that down by patient/hernia characteristics since he doesn’t turn anyone away. Maybe a certain subgroup of patients have disproportionately high pain rates that are dragging down his overall stats and misrepresenting what the average patient can expect…?

[MarkT]

I didn’t say chronic pain was anecdotal…I said people have skewed perceptions of reality, largely as a result of spending too much time on forums, FB groups, etc. with non-representative samples of problem cases.

A 15% complication rate is indeed too high for comfort…but that is not what patients of most high-volume specialists realize, it almost surely is lower for ‘normal’ cases (smaller hernias, no comborbities, etc.), and it still invalidates some of the ridiculous statements around here of ‘so much chronic pain with Shouldice’, that ‘almost everyone who gets a tissue repair has problems’, that there are ‘no good options out there’, that all mesh should be ‘banned’, etc.

There are people coming to this forum for legit information, not hysteria and lies.

What has Dr. Kang recently posted, btw? I have not seen it.

[Watchful]

The thing is that it’s not just anecdotes. The chronic pain results you see in studies aren’t good (ballpark of 15%). Also, see the numbers just posted by Dr. Kang who is about as focused and high volume as it gets. It’s certainly a minority who get bad results, but a minority that’s too large for comfort.

[MarkT]

Someone else understands! I have been saying this for a while.

I think a number of people here have skewed perceptions of risk/complication prevalence because they spend so much time reading about problem cases online which represent a significant minority of cases, especially from high-volume hernia specialists.