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Pain after additional hernia surgery
I had a previous inguinal hernia repair on the right groin about 15 years ago which went very well. In June, I was diagnosed with an ultra sound test, a Spigelian hernia in the right side which was was small. It had been giving me more steady pain as time went on and that was the reason I needed it repaired. This surgery was in early August. About a month later, I began to feel pain radiating to the right groin, lower right abdomen and sometimes the right flank. This pain or discomfort would seem to go away but also is becoming a little steadier over time. They placed a mesh with absorbable fixtures to hold the mesh in place. I don’t know if this mesh was also stitched in. I called the surgeon and he said it could just be settling in place or normal healing. However, I am worried something could have caused the repair to fail. I don’t know how likely this is. Or could it be from these absorbable tacking fixtures moving or pressing on nerves? Or the mesh settling in and causing a pulling on nerves? Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
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2 Replies
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The mesh may be filling in with scar tissue and incorporating. It may shrink or pull on structures or nerves. Or sometimes it doesn’t incorporate well, particularly if it’s a small mesh, and applies a lot of forces and begins tearing tissue or working itself free.
In the vast majority of cases the minor aches and pains eventually work themselves out but it may take up to a year.
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Try to look through as many posts on the forum as you can. Many of them are about pain from mesh implantation.
As tissue grows in to and through the pores of the mesh, it pulls on it and causes it to shrink and harden. Pain from mesh appears to affect about 15% of all mesh implantation patients according to many studies done over the decades that mesh has been used. The number for discomfort seems to be even higher.
Mesh does not “fail” per se. It can move as it shrinks allowing a hernia recurrence. Or it can cause enough pain that the patient seeks to have it removed. Generally, people involved in implanting mesh will not refer to a mesh “failure”. They won’t say that the mesh failed, they will say that the patient is suffering a mesh “reaction”, or a recurrence. Patient pain is not a quality used to define success of a mesh product. Only recurrence is.
The best that you can do is to try to avoid the things that cause discomfort/pain, and hope that your body can adjust to the mesh.
Absorbable tacks can take months to fully disintegrate so there might be changes for quite a while. Also, if they used Progrip mesh, it has an absorbable layer that can also take months to fully disintegrate and be absorbed. Progrip is very popular (“celebrating two million implants sold worldwide”).
It’s sad that you are having these new and unexpected problems. But, you are part of a significantly large group of people. Read through the posts and do more reading on the internet and you will learn a lot. Find out what type of mesh was used and that will help you understand also. There are many many different types.
Good luck.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Good intentions.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by
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