Why hernias hurt

What started as pressure or discomfort can turn into pain. The pain may not just be in the area of the hernia; it can radiate to your hip, back, leg — even to the genitals. As your hernia gets worse, many aspects of your life will get worse right along with it. Your job, your family, your weekends, and even your sex life can all suffer. If the loop of intestine is tightly trapped, the blood supply can be cut off strangulation.

Without the blood supply, the trapped tissue will swell, die, and become infected. The only way to repair a hernia is through surgery.

The good news? New procedures and materials offer options that can decrease discomfort and speed recovery, so you can get back to your health — and your life — faster than you might think. Call your doctor or surgeon. A: Treatment varies depending on the type of hernia, symptoms and the patient's sex. Inguinal hernias in women are more likely to become emergencies.

Women also have a greater chance of developing complications than in men. So, we typically recommend surgical repair after diagnosis.

Studies of men with inguinal hernias indicate the risk of having an emergency, like part of the bowel getting stuck or strangled in the muscle gap, is quite low. But because hernias tend to grow larger or cause symptoms over time, most men will require surgery within 10 years of hernia diagnosis. There are two surgical treatments for inguinal hernias. Minimally invasive surgery is often performed laparoscopically, requiring only keyhole-size incisions through which a tiny camera and instruments can be inserted to make repairs.

Minimally invasive robotic surgery similar to laparoscopy, but surgeons use a controller to move instruments is also an option. With minimally invasive surgery, patients are back to their regular activity within two weeks. Open surgery is the other treatment option — recovery takes four to six weeks. For both men and women, repair is recommended for most abdominal hernias. The exception is if you have risk factors for complications or hernia recurrence, such as obesity or poorly controlled diabetes.

They will usually require surgery more urgently than inguinal hernias once they are discovered because of this. The second most common type of hernia after inguinal hernias, umbilical hernias develop in the umbilicus or belly button. All of us have a potential weakness there that results from having our umbilical cords protrude from that spot as newborns.

Once the cord is cut and the hole closes, then some of us will eventually develop a hernia at that spot as we get older. Some of the most common risk factors for these types of hernias are anything that causes an increase in abdominal girth. Pregnancy in women is a common cause, while the gradual expansion of the waist line that often accompanies getting older and enjoying eating is another.

These will typically present with a small bulge either in or just to the side of the belly button that will usually become tender if pressed on. When they first appear, they are usually reducible, meaning you can push the bulge back down into the abdomen.

This is a good thing. Should the hernia get to a point that you cannot push it back in, then it is at risk for becoming incarcerated. Just like with inguinal hernias, if this happens then the risk of the hernia becoming strangulated and the associated intestines that are pushing through becoming ischemic goes way up. At this point, repair of the hernia is a necessity and should not be delayed any longer.

The location and severity of the hernia will affect the timing and urgency of that repair however, and is something that should be discussed with a hernia specialist. The 63 year old used a common butter knife and even tried to seal the wound with a cigarette when local police finally arrived on the scene.

What can make a hernia so bad that a person would do anything to get it out of their system? Pain occurs from hernias for several reasons, and can and does often vary in character sharp, dull, burning etc. Pain can occur because the tissue at and around the hole is being stretched or torn and therefore in some fashion damaged. This usually will cause pain directly at the site of the hernia and is characterized as Localized Pain.

Pain, localized to the area of the hernia defect itself is usually the result of stretching and tearing of the abdominal wall tissue such as the area muscle and tendon.

As the bulge increases, this pain tends to be more intense. As the bulge reduces, and the contents of the hernia fall back into the abdominal cavity itself, the pain reduces or perhaps even disappears, only to recur again as the hernia once again protrudes.