Kang Korean Reviews

[Joe]

Korean friend looked up kang. Found very few reviews total. And mostly were good. Said efficient and simple. One review said chronic pain after 2 months and patient was upset he wasnt told pain would last. No recurrances. I said to me friend well maybe koreans arent as spoiled as americans. she said no they are way way worse. So bottom line not much bad to say about kang

[Watchful]

Ask your friend to look harder. It’s true that most reviews are good, but there are reviews with recurrence. For example, on Google Maps there’s a review written in Korean from a patient who had a recurrence there, and 2 of the 4 people he met at the hospital were there for recurrence after surgery there.

[Joe]

Mr “Watchful” thanks. I asked my friend to check again and she did not find those reviews. She said she looked pretty carefully. Even assuming your find Dr. Kang claims 23000 repairs so it would seem there would be more bad reviews -particularly if koreans are super picky complainers as my korean doctor friend says. Look at the shouldice reviews and you will find a lot of horror stories. I just saw someone post that Kang is doing a Marcy for indirect hernias and apparently Dr Towfigh thinks they will not last. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Watchful]

Chuck/Joe/Bill,

The only thought I have on that is that I wouldn’t take the chance. It may be sufficient in some cases, but not in others – we don’t know. He never explained his technique(s) in detail, and obvious questions such as how he handles a large hernia are left unanswered.

[Good intentions]

It’s interesting that somehow the Marcy repair for an indirect hernia has been classified by the group here on the forum as “inferior”. Where is the data?

People should keep in mind that the mesh bandwagon has been on the road for a very long time. People have been asking, wondering, and working to understand if mesh really is the wonder material that it has been sold as. The people in the past that were promoting mesh to grow the market had to find flaws in the current methods to gain market share. The people introducing new products today still do it, even mesh against mesh. Often you’ll see that the criticism of the Marcy repair is from people that believe in mesh repairs. It’s just how the hernia repair field is today. It is at the heart of the “Guidelines”, the premise that mesh is the best repair method and all others are inferior. Mesh has a place but it is not the best method for every single hernia.

Here are a couple of articles about the Marcy repair, onr very recent.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10029-022-02682-y

Novel modification of Marcy operation for indirect inguinal hernia reconstituting deep inguinal ring shutter action
K. Y. Chung, S. H. Song, D. Jung & A. Kim
Hernia volume 27, pages181–190 (2023)

Here is an actual study comparing against the PHS mesh repair.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00595-012-0384-5

A randomized prospective trial comparing clinical outcomes 3 years after surgery by Marcy repair and Prolene Hernia System® repair for adult indirect inguinal hernia
Motohito Nakagawa, Takeshi Nagase, Tomotaka Akatsu, Shun Imai, Naoki Fujimura, Tatsuo Asagoe & Toshio Kanai
Surgery Today volume 43, pages1109–1115 (2013)

[Good intentions]

Dr. Chen includes a Marcy repair in his Lichtenstein method. The key hole in the mesh does not do all of the work.

At about 8:45 in his video.

[pinto]

@Good intentions points out: “It’s interesting that somehow the Marcy repair for an indirect hernia has been classified by the group here on the forum as “inferior”. Where is the data?”

A more fundamental question is “Where’s the beef?” It’s unanswerable because some here are so strongly biased against Kang Repair (KR). Example: Some members seemed aghast in disbelief when I reported not having post-op pain after not one but two Kang surgeries. No reasoning, nothing, can be said that can satisfy such bias!

Overall, communications here prove an important point: You can’t be your own doctor. If you can’t apply minimal critical thought, how can you effectively reason or understand statistical information, information that informs intelligent medical decisions? Over and over again my personal recurrence is laundered here as proof KR is lacking. One case! One case dooms forever whatever merit KR possesses.

Similarly a few anecdotes of KR recurrences get dredged from somewhere to blot out possibly thousands of successes. Moreover Kang’s report of their patient survey for pain gets twisted and distorted here. I’m not saying throw caution to the wind, but neither can you cast poor statistical thinking to be the paragon of thought.

To GI: “Where’s the data?” unfortunately will get lost on those who cannot understand the question.

[Watchful]

GI – A conclusion that can be drawn from what Dr. Chen does is that Marcy isn’t sufficient. Otherwise, why is the mesh there?

Pinto – How were Kang’s chronic pain numbers distorted? They are simply high, unfortunately. If anything, this was surprising because the thinking of a few here was that his chronic pain numbers would be low, while recurrence rates might be high.

• This reply was modified 3 months ago by Watchful.

[pinto]

@Watchful, I appreciate your question but direct you to our original discussion about it. I have yet to see any consideration of the counterpoints made.

[Author]

Posts