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Please help…. at wits end
Sorry to hear about your daughter. It is very frustrating and I have a friend who’s grandmother was not given treatment in the UK because of her age. After my first hernia surgery I went through what your daughter has gone through.
I have had 3 different hernias. The first one no pain at the start and than a month later some slight pain on and off. The second a lot of pain and no bulge or was never found by a doctor doing an exam and the third that sounds like your daughters was very small found by a CT scan and at times very painful and one surgeon said he could not find it and it might not be a hernia. When I did have the second surgery done it was a small hernia.
Hang in there, it sometimes can be a very frustrating journey. If you have the income take a medical vacation to the states. California, Florida, Tennessee and Philly have some of the best hernia doctors around and great places to visit. Dr Towfigh seems to know more about female hernias than most other surgeons and other hernia doctors.
Good luck
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Inguinal Hernia Surgey Complication In Progress?
That sounds like a standard Ultrasound. Motion or dynamic is when you move during the ultrasound I believe. Let a Doctor chime in on this one. I asked many times for this buy my world class hospital did not have anyone on staff who knew how to perform one or they did not want me to have one. Funny a local health club had a doctor come in to do them for sports injuries.
Not sure if I stated on your post but many times before get the book Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care Paperback – October 15, 2013
by Martin Makary (Author) this is a must read. It will help you with your knowledge of what real medical care doe not tell you. -
Inguinal Hernia Surgey Complication In Progress?
Not sure what the problem could be but have been there.
Surgeons must have a class on don’t worry you have two testicles and you only need one. I heard that more than once from my quote experts trying to find out my pain from my hernia surgery. If nothing else works we can remove your testicle and I ask, will it take care of the problem? I don’t knew but it might work! You can take one of mine if can I take one of yours? I am sure the doctor will change their tune fast! A story from my son. He was a life guard and was guarding the diving well. An orthopedic surgeon was going off the high dive and hit the water wrong and came up wailing like a little baby from sustaining an injury to his shoulder. I am sure he was wailing since he knew what pain he was going to be involved in to have it fixed and time to recover if ever. Plus what is the saying when you ask a surgeon who are the 3 best surgeons in their specialty. me, myself and I.
There are so many nerves in the groin area who knows what type of damage might have happened. It sounds like you are past the danger of losing a testicle at this time from loss of blood flow. You could ask for a ultrasound of the scrotum and testicle which is different than one for a hernia.
Not sure but if the cause would be mesh too tight around the spermatic cord. A doctor would need to answer that.
Did you get a motion or dynamic ultrasound for the hernia?
Remember your op report might be missing information too. Go back to the surgeon and ask probing questions. My doctor a true professional stated never again ask me anything about your surgery. He could not answer any aspect of the surgery he did only days before, which as stated in the op report would be in the 1% type of hernia surgery preformed. Quote Right very large direct and indirect sliding inguinal and removal of the epigastric vessel. This without any bulge.
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Mesh Hernia repair failure or not?
What you describe sounds a lot like what happened to me. Two years of pain and suffering in what turned out to be a femoral hernia. I had two episodes of quote ripping and the second one seemed to be the occurrence of the femoral hernia. The Dr. stated he inserted the mesh so tight it would never move. I had CT scan but showed nothing. I think the best according to this site is MRI while bearing down or Motion or dynamic ultrasound.
Good luck.
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Inguinal Hernia Surgey Complication In Progress?
Get you Op Report ASAP and than post your findings. Also contact the surgeon and ask multiple questions after you get the op report. I found mine to be missing information that the surgeon told my verbally.
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top hernia doctors in georgia or tn
Momof4
It is very hard when you are in pain and suffering, on medications that do very little and find answers very hard to get and conflicting.
Read my post on overlapping surgery. The surgeon that caused my pain and suffering is at VCU and you could get this surgeon without your knowledge. I would never go to a hospital that had my original surgeon on staff.
If you do go to this expert at VCU again ask him
How many total hernia surgeries they have done? Since this is a teaching hospital I would cut that number in half since residents will perform a large number of this surgeons procedures at a teaching facility.
How many done by robot?
How many total surgeries by robot?
How many corrective hernia surgeries total?
How many by robot.
Success rate for each of the above.
Again get the book Unaccountable and read it. This will give you inside knowledge and a road map.
A robot is only as good as the surgeon operating it. Remember it could be a resident who has never used a robot before or done a mesh removal or both before. Many of us have seen and have had surgery by Goodyear, Ramshaw, Chen and Towfigh but I have never heard of anyone mentioning someone at VCU before. The hospital that did mine has 11 surgeons as AHS members but do less that 750 hernia surgeries a year plus they could not even perform a hernia surgery on a well known person and was referred to a real hernia specialist.
Maybe I am lucky but I have been pain free now for four years since my corrective surgery.
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Not sure what to do – surgery or not
Hi Norton,
I had a hernia that a quote expert tried to repair and things went very south and ruined 2 years of my health and enjoyment. It looks like you might have read some of my posts. My quote top surgeon and hospital had a known 25% post surgical pain issue after 1 year. It was published as a medical study and I think I gave the link here once.
I also recommend the book Unaccountable as a starting point but it seems no one wants to take the time to read it.
Again if I was told of the 25 to over 30 percent post surgical pain maybe for the rest of my life or a 10-20 percent reoccurrence rate and at your age I would go to a tissue specialist.
Good luck on you decision.
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Nerve Entrapment?
This sound close to what I had and turned out to be a femoral hernia that went diagnosed by seven different quote experts over two years. Good luck
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Overlapping surgeries to face US Senate inquiry
I guess I should expand and explain this to the forum. This should be a major concern of everyone that is going under the knive.
Here how it goes. As a patient you go see a surgeon and lets say it is one of the recommended surgeons on this forum. You really like the Dr and agree to have the surgery by this expert hernia surgeon and agree on treatment including this surgeon will perform the entire surgery. On the day of the surgery you meet your expert surgeon and they state they will see you after the surgery but once you are out the surgeon that you signed the informed consent with and stated they were going to perform your surgery leaves your operating room and disappears and does not perform any part of your surgery. In recovery your surgeon comes in and tells you what the resident, intern, fellow or other surgeon has told them about your surgery. Most of the time it works out but things happen and than you suffer and are told things happen, sometimes surgeries go wrong and we will now try to fix it. Your life has now changed, maybe the outcome would have been the same but a resident who has never done this type of surgery is on there own with a sharp weapon in there inexperienced hands cutting into you instead of the expert you signed up for. This is not noted in your Op Report and is billed as the original surgeon so you have no idea. Them’s the breaks and you get to live with it. The surgeon gets paid and wipes his hands of it.
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Inguinal hernia – pls help with advice
Hi Norton,
I will start out with my standard recommendation and that is to read the book Unaccountable before proceeding, unless it is life threatening.
My history is long but I asked all of the right questions and got all of the right answers only to find after my surgery that my expert who had done well of 1,000 open surgeries with excellent outcomes had done none in the previous 18 months and the hospital itself had 25 to 30 percent 1 year post surgery pain issue. So be VERY CAREFUL.
The surgeon and their knowledge and experience are crucial. If the surgeon does open with mesh all of the time like Dr Goodyear that would be the surgery I would go with with Dr Goodyear.
It is very hard to find a pure tissue surgeon in the US, it seems to require more skill and time to perform.
The question I ask would I chance a smaller figure for a reoccurrence maybe in my lifetime or a higher chance for a lifetime of pain with mesh? Looking back I would have gone with a pure tissue surgery if I could go to a specialist but my insurance did not allow me to.
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Recurrent pain?
Sorry to hear about your pain. I had issues that started about 7 weeks after my original hernia surgery and all of my world class experts could not identify what was wrong. It would have helped if they ordered the correct imaging at the time but none did. When I had surgery on my other side for another hernia the doctor found a femoral hernia on the side of the original side plus he removed the first mesh. I am sure this is very rare. Took care of my pain and tightness right away.
Good luck.
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Having a Difficult Time Deciding
Not sure if you have had your surgery but be very careful when deciding on a quote expert. If you can travel to have it done go with one of the doctors that come up over and over on this site.
As a lay person I might be wrong but an open surgery you do not have to have general anesthetics. I know my mom was very concerned over getting a general at an older age.
Good Luck and ask a lot of questions.
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inferior epigastric
I guess I am still trying tin figure out what had happened to me since my surgeon and hospital would not or could not answer any post surgical questions.
I had open surgery with GA. I was told that I would not need or would be catheterized for the surgery.
After my surgery and my second attempt to pass urine which I could not do I was told that If I could not pass urine on the next attempt that I would be catheterized and than released. They also decided that they would do a ultrasound and found my bladder was empty. The IW was removed way before this.
When I asked a couple other medical professionals they stated loss of fluids or they did not give me enough IV during the surgery.
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Re: mesh or no mesh surgery
Seeker,
During my surgery about 5 years ago when I had surgery to resolve the pain and tightness after my IH surgery they found an diagnosed Femoral hernia and fixed it with mesh. I have had no issues at all and I am not a fan of mesh.
Good luck in your recovery.
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inferior epigastric
Why would my bladder be empty after surgery?
And it looks like about a 1″ if the vessel was removed.
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top hernia doctors in georgia or tn
Did you get the book and read Unaccountable?
How did the visit go?
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Surgeon challenging Radiologist’s CT scan
Dr Goodyear may have done more hernia surgeries than any other surgeon in the US and does corrective procedures also. Did you review his website and forum?
I would trust Dr Goodyear.
If it is a Lipoma not sure if that is a GS surgery or Urology. I would want a true specialist when working in that area. I know in hernia surgery they remove Lipoma’s but if it was just for that I thinking Urologist, maybe I am wrong.
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top hernia doctors in georgia or tn
Hi Momof4,
This might be a little long. Sorry
If you can get and read Unaccountable by Martin Makary before your next appointment. This might help you with some questions and what to look for. I think it took me about 4 to 8 hours to read. https://www.amazon.com/Unaccountable-Hospitals-Transparency-Revolutionize-Health/dp/1608198383
I hope I have given some good advice and have been clear and concise. I am the worst writer and it is very hard for me to put my thoughts into a written message. This is about the hardest thing I can do.
Your story and what you have gone through is way above what I had to deal with and I know exactly how and what you are going through. I hope wherever and whoever you decide on gets you back to your presurgery condition.
I am a lay person and I am giving you my personal thoughts. You need to go by what you feel is best and which Dr. you trust the most. Out of all of the General surgeons here in the US, I am guessing that their might be 50 to 200 that specialize in hernia surgery. Remember it is just a hernia, just a simply surgery! The number of the true expert/specialist might be around 20 or so with only 1-10 that have knowledge, experience and skills to truly know when they start a surgery like what you need and to understand what is presented to them and how to fix what is or has been broken. You already saw Dr Chen supposedly one of the best. What was his surgical plan?
I have never been to your state or have any knowledge of VCU or any information on the Dr. I think you are seeing but I have personal experience with member of the GS staff at VCU I could never recommend that surgeon and I would be very leery of a hospital that has this surgeon on its staff. VCU and the Dr. you are seeing could be the best in the world but go slowly.
On robotic surgery. It is fairly new to hernia but has been used in other area’s but it is only as good as the surgeon and their skill using it. My parents have a very good friend who had a bad robotic surgery by quote one of the best in the nation. The person who had to surgery was a research Dr. working on a cure for one major disease, graduated from the same school that did the surgery and had complete trust in them. He is one of the most interesting person and nice guys you would meet that know about every issue you could think of. After the surgery the Dr. dropped him like a hot potato and would not speak with him. Shortly afterword he got an infection that almost killed him. Last time I spoke to him he was a broken man a shadow of himself. Very sad. I also saw this same Dr. and wanted to do a different type of surgery but roboticly. Interesting he recommended this surgery with no imaging and when pressed about if he was going to do the entire cutting edge surgery it was like deer in headlights, he froze and could not answer the question. He finally did state that he would be present in the OR with a resident doing the surgery. Goodbye. I would rather have the best/skilled hernia surgeon in the world with 30 to 50 year old technology without mesh than an average general surgeon with a robot with mesh doing my surgery.
Here are some of the questions I would ask the Dr and every person on his staff that you meet. Go in with your eyes wide open and your radar on.
How many years have you been licensed. Also check with the state for any complaints.
How many hernia surgeries have you done the entire surgery. What types hernia surgery and open or lap.
This is a teaching hospital at the one that I have my surgery I found out up to 90% are done by a resident.Are you going to perform the entire surgery. If not why, who is and what is their experience.
How many have you done in the last year. Success rate. What were the problems.
How many corrective surgeries. How many cases like mine. Results.
Do you have your own surgical team.
Do you have any research grants or financial connections to any of the products to be used in the surgery.
How many robotic surgeries have you done. How many hernia with robotic. How many corrective hernia robotic. Outcomes. There are many Dr.s who are getting money to use robotic surgery to expand the types of surgeries done and prove the concept.
Can I get a copy of the video of the procedure.
Are you a state employee and do you have extra legal protection against law suits. My state there is such a small amount that a state Dr can be sued for, that no lawyer will even talk to you about a lawsuit. The hospital keeps this very close to the vest and does not disclose this fact.
What is your surgical plan and outcome you expect.
recovery time for this complex surgery.
Who will be performing the Gas. Their years of experience. How many surgeries have you done with them.
Get and read the informed consent before signing and surgery
Who is going to be in the OR. Mine was only to be one resident to assist him. But it was One resident, one fellow, two medical students plus his personal surgical team was listed as floaters and the surgeon could not answer any questions afterword on any part of my surgery. It might have been a ghost surgery.
I am sure there are more questions to ask. Some surgeons are put off by questions, since they think whatever they tell you you should just say yes and agree with them.
Trust your sixth sense. Get a copy of all of your medical records and before going ahead with the surgery get a copy of this upcoming appointment. I found out after my surgery that the surgeon did not have any history or progress notes and any of the agreed treatment plan in my medical history
I hope this makes some sense. I wish you the best and if you have any other questions just ask. Again sorry for being so long.
Get the book Unaccountable.
This took me the last day to think this out and over an hour to write this.
Good Luck
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top hernia doctors in georgia or tn
Momof4
Did you have your surgery yet?
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Undetermined Lower Pelvic
Do you do a lot of cycling(bicycle)?