Ventral Hernia

Ventral hernia

        Ventral hernia is a well known and common type of hernia in which the abdominal muscles are weakened beyond their limit. That weakness develops into a canal from the inside of your abdomen, where the liver, stomach and intestines are stored, to the innermost layer of skin. Once the canal lumen is wide enough, some part of your organs are susceptible to pass through it and create a bulge, the first symptom of ventral hernia.

        Maybe you are wondering what can cause this weak spot in your muscle structure. The answer is simple: any physical activity that is overdone or repeated day after day, for several years. For example, heavy lifting (be it at the local gym or at a construction site), chronic coughing (heavy smokers with their permanently irritated throats or tuberculosis patients are the most likely to develop ventral hernia), severe vomiting (the bulimics and anorexics out there are not only in peril of starving themselves to death, they can fall ill with this kind of hernia as well), obesity (the amount of fat that presses against your abdominal wall is too much for the muscles to contain for long periods of time, causing them to collapse sooner rather than later), pregnancy (only in those pregnancies in which the woman has gained a large number of kilograms or in which the uterus is positioned straight in the middle of the belly) and diabetes (some diabetics gain weight while others loose muscle mass, making it easy for the canal to breach the abdominal muscles) are some of the known and expected causes of ventral hernia.

        Since it is a typical hernia, it has two general subtypes:

• A reversible version: the bulge, though painful and sometimes quite large, can be pushed back into the abdominal cavity with slow and gentle movements. It is recommended that this is done only by a physician or by the patient under a medical doctors' direct supervision. Do not use a lot of force or sudden moves because you could cause even more damage.
• An irreversible version: this time, the bulge is no longer able to slide from one side to the other. Usually, this is the moment in which the ventral hernia becomes so painful that it is almost impossible to touch it. The reason behind all that pain is that the part of your internal organs that is trapped inside that bulge is no longer getting a constant blood supply and it is starting to die, slowly but surely. Surgery is the only way to fix this type of ventral hernia.

Ventral hernia symptoms

        It manifests typical hernia symptoms, in the following order:

• The appearance of a bulge: in this case, the bulge is noticeable both when standing and when sitting down. It does not usually hurt, but it can feel strange and it does bother the patient when lying on his or her belly.
• Pain
• Constipation and weight loss

Ventral hernia treatment

        When you seek treatment, be it online or with a specialist, you have to keep in mind the fact that the only way to repair a hernia of any type is through surgery. There have been many procedures tested throughout the years, but only two are still used to this day:

• Open surgery: the surgeon will cut right on top of the bulge, try and push it back and repair the weakness in the muscles. If that does not work, he or she will remove the damaged part of the organ and then insert a plastic mesh to offer some sort of supplementary support to your abdominal wall, so as to avoid reappearances of this condition.
• Laparoscopic surgery: this version does not involve one big cut, but rather a series of smaller ones, through which the surgeon will insert medical instruments to try and fix your hernia.

       Though this is not a complicated procedure, there are risks involved, just like in any other surgery. These are best discussed with your attending physician.