Watchful
Forum Replies Created
-
Regarding creating weakness in other areas. This is something that I’ve been wondering about too. Can the tissue manipulation of Shouldice cause weakness in other areas? It seems to be extensive enough to have potentially direct or indirect impact on a pretty large area.
For example, if you have a Shouldice repair on one side, are you more likely to get a hernia on the other side than if you had Lichtenstein? I’ve never seen studies of this sort of thing.
-
Skipping the 3rd and 4th layers will likely make the repair more vulnerable to recurrence. These layers cover the medial part of the repair which is susceptible to recurrence (according to the Shouldice Hospital).
-
It sounds like it’s likely to improve further for you as well, ajm222.
I find the concept of “chronic” pain to be a bit misleading. It’s typically defined as pain at 3+ months, or sometimes 6+ months post surgery. The term “chronic” has a connotation of something that persists permanently. It’s important to realize that this is not necessarily the case. Even chronic pain can improve or even resolve with time – it may just take longer than 3 or 6 months.
-
Thanks, William. Indeed, time is needed, and the body has some amazing abilities to adapt and heal. It’s very important not to freak out or despair prematurely. Of course, sometimes the healing can’t happen even with time, but luckily it looks like I’m on a good path.
-
They really shouldn’t call these 2-layer procedures “Shouldice”. That’s a specific procedure which is a 4-layer repair.
-
Right – patients aren’t given a true picture of the risks. This is the case with many other surgeries and treatments as well, not just hernia surgery. “The cure is worse than the disease” is an all too common reality in medicine, unfortunately.
-
We’ve had open mesh cases complaining about pain, such as Baris who ended up having his removed at Shouldice I believe.
A big part of Dr. Brown’s practice was treating chronic pain patients after Lichtenstein procedures. He used to post here before his retirement.
The first surgeon I approached regarding my hernia had chronic pain himself from Lichtenstein and needed a neurectomy.
A colleague of mine still has occasional pain 20 years after his Lichtenstein.
Studies show pretty high rates of chronic pain for Lichtenstein. It’s far from a safe procedure in that regard.
-
There’s a tiny number of people on this forum. No meaningful conclusions can be drawn from this miniscule population.
The surprising thing to me is that so few people pop up here. You would think that a lot more would find their way here since there’s a very large number of hernia surgeries.
-
It is indeed interesting. Groin fascia is obviously injured in open surgery for groin hernia. The body really didn’t evolve to be friendly to surgery.
-
GI – Going to a random surgeon certainly isn’t a good idea, and increases the risk of a bad result. However, the odds aren’t exactly great with research either. Even Dr. Kang is reporting chronic pain odds similar to a Russian Roulette with a 6-shooter.
-
William,
Weight reduction could help to some degree.
I didn’t have issues with lifting, at least not related to the hernia. Lifting just irritated my back problems. My main problem related to the hernia was with standing or walking for a long time. At some point, I would have to lie down and push the hernia back in, which wasn’t easy. When I started to have to lie down on the street or in some field when taking a walk, it was time for surgery.
I didn’t really find anything that helped in my particular case.
-
William,
It’s a well-known technique used in severe intractable cases of pain. It’s more commonly used in bad spine issues.
-
Right, it sounds like something bad or wrong occurred during the first surgery.
Decisions after that are extremely difficult. Do you let the same surgeon reoperate to try to fix it? They are the ones who “botched” your first surgery, so why trust them with a revision which can be even more challenging? On the other hand, they may know best what’s going on in there because they did the original surgery. Extremely tough situation. My inclination would be to avoid using the same surgeon who may be in over their heads on revisional surgery since that’s not something they normally do. Also, it would be hard for me too maintain trust. There could be special circumstances where I would still go with the same surgeon.
-
David M,
His original hernia was indirect, but I’m not sure about the type of hernia for the recurrence. He never bothered having it looked at. When he reached his 70s, he decided not to treat anything surgically unless absolutely necessary. He was having severe spine issues, prostate issues, kidney stone issues, etc. When you have all that, where do you even start? His thinking was that his body was turning into a clunker, and it is what it is. Trying to fix it is just playing whac-a-mole and likely to lead to more grief.
He agreed to cataract surgery, but even that wasn’t all that helpful because he suffers from macular degeneration as well. He got bad dry eye from the surgery, but not much benefit. To be fair, I don’t know what I would have done either. He was a living medical encyclopedia of bad but not lethal medical conditions. Largely pointless to treat this or that when you have 10 other things. Now he has congestive heart failure on top of it all.
-
It’s a tough situation, but I’m with William on this. I would consult with one or more of the top experts for their take on this if possible. I would have already done it earlier before jumping into reoperations with the same surgeon, but what is done is done at this point.
-
You don’t really sound like Chuck, and your story is quite different. It’s just that in recent times all the “newcomers” turned out to be Chuck.
-
He was in his early or mid 70s when it recurred – not sure exactly.
-
“Not Safe for Work”
Yeah, he left it. He’s 86 now, and suffers from multiple more serious medical conditions.
-
The recurrence can be a lot worse than what you had originally. This was the case with my dad. His hernia which recurred years after tissue repair became very large and overwhelmed the entire area. I won’t go into NSFW details. Not something anyone would want to deal with.
Recurrences can also be harder to fix effectively.
-
This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by Watchful.
-
This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by
-
The good old Chuckster is baaaack 🙂