Watchful

It might be him. Here’s the video:

Shouldice repair

The Germans I mentioned do primarily Shouldice and Lichtenstein, not 5 types of hernia surgery.

There’s a Biohernia video demonstrating Shouldice performed by a surgeon who I thought was located in the UK, although I’m not sure. I think he was Indian and mentioned that he does more mesh now because that doesn’t take as long. I always wondered who this surgeon was – he seemed very competent with Shouldice.

Like I mentioned before, if I were…[Read more]

Shouldice is a 4-layer repair. There are surgeons who do 2 of these with permanent sutures, and 2 with absorbable. Dr. Wiese, for example. I think Dr. Koch does it that way too. They claim good results.

I don’t know about “2-layer Shouldice”.

Not sure this is something that’s worth obsessing about too much. My understanding is that a clinically…[Read more]

I don’t know how helpful it would be to compare hernia surgery to other surgeries. Even if hernia mesh surgery has more chronic pain than some of these other surgeries, the mesh may not be the culprit, and if it has less, it doesn’t mean that mesh is fine.

The natural approach would be to compare various mesh techniques to various tissue repair…[Read more]

That’s what I like about Dr. Kang. He has been focused on minimalist approaches causing as little damage as possible while repairing the hernia. Whether that comes at the price of higher recurrence rates or not, I don’t know. He says not.

Even if there is a higher risk of recurrence, it may still be acceptably low when taking into account the…[Read more]

If post-surgery issues such as some level of chronic pain are that common, there should at least be better disclosure to the patient before surgery. Some boilerplate language buried in doctor’s notes or consent forms isn’t enough because no one reads them, and they don’t mention the incidence, so patients can’t tell if these complications are…[Read more]

Good progress – thanks for the update. It sounds like you had an indirect hernia. It’s that correct?

William,

It depends on the cause of the pain. If a nerve was damaged by the surgery, then nurectomy can be an option.

@drtowfigh

The part that isn’t clear is the basis for the claim that Marcy has poor results for adult male hernias. I found only one study, and it showed good results. Doctors who practiced it (Kang, Brown) claimed good results. I think that’s the reason this keeps coming up. Where was the battle that you mentioned documented? There’s also the…[Read more]

That’s exactly what he’s saying. Assuming his numbers are correct, then his Marcy variant works well even in adult males (Koreans, at least). There are others who claim that Marcy works well. There was a study in Japan that showed this. Dr. Brown claimed to have success with it, although he was all over the place in terms of techniques he was…[Read more]

The hernia. It grew larger over time – I had it for decades.

My internal ring was more like a hula hoop (huge defect size) than a ring, so not sure how Kang’s indirect hernia repair would have worked. I think I needed the full low-tension reconstruction of the Shouldice procedure, but I don’t know for sure.

Regardless, there’s the question of recurrence, and that takes time to study. The reports of…[Read more]

Yes, Dr. Conze would be my top choice for tissue repair in a case like yours.

I didn’t talk to Dr. Koch because I was concerned about what happened with Baris.

I have the flip side of your problem since I had tissue repair, and if I recur, I’ll most likely need to go with lap mesh. Would you pick Dr. Belyansky as the best surgeon for that? There…[Read more]

Most cases turn out just fine with lap mesh, robotic mesh, open mesh, and Shouldice, but it’s still a crapshoot. Assuming you did your research about your surgeon (I don’t know anything about him), you just got unlucky. Maybe you would have had better results with open mesh or Shouldice, and maybe you would have had other…[Read more]

Chuck,

A korean colleague of mine appears to deserve the money. See the thread you started before.

Since we’re talking about reviews…

When I was researching where to go for surgery, I did ask a Korean colleague to look up reviews on Korean sites of hernia surgery at Gibbeum. He found a total of 18 reviews, and said that most of the ones he found were good.

One complained about initial pain, but this resolved later. One complained about…[Read more]

Dr. Kang did explain his techniques on this forum in the past. Not in every minute detail, but he said what he does.

Based on my understanding of what he wrote:

For an indirect hernia, it’s a Marcy variant. He has his own way of stitching the internal ring, and he has gone through many tweaks of that, but we know what he does in principle.…[Read more]

By the way, you can check their Google reviews as well.

The good and bad reviews you see there should be legit. It is true, however, that they have a high bar for bad reviews, so assume that you don’t see the full picture of bad reviews. Still, the good reviews tell you a lot.

That’s strange. I talked to all 3 of them and didn’t see any indication of anything unprofessional, but my partner wasn’t there, so I wouldn’t be able to say about that type of thing…

I spent more time with Lorenz and Conze, and had very elaborate and detailed discussions with them. They were very patient and friendly, and were well-aware that…[Read more]