Yesterday, on my way home from work, my neighbor, Auntie Lee, stopped me, and it turned out that Auntie Lee had recently added a problem to her mind. Two years ago, she underwent an emergency cholecystectomy at our hospital because of acute cholecystitis complicated by gallbladder stones. The recovery was good, and she was doing her chores as usual. The actual fact is that you can find a lot of people who have been in the business for a long time. But as time goes on that “lump” is getting bigger and bigger, and now it’s the size of an apple, and there’s often a feeling of bloating and even stomach pain, and the stools are not normal anymore. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. After a brief physical examination and an abdominal ultrasound, she was diagnosed with a huge incisional hernia of the abdominal wall, which required inpatient surgery. So what is an incisional hernia of the abdominal wall? In fact, incisional hernia is a kind of “hernia”, which is the same kind of disease as “small intestine gas” that people often say. After abdominal surgery, the tissues around the incision are weaker than the non-operated parts, and the pressure inside the abdominal cavity is increased (such as chronic cough, constipation, obesity, old age, frequent physical activity, etc.), resulting in the formation of a small gap in the abdominal wall, which causes the small intestine and other organs in the abdominal cavity to protrude outward through this gap, forming the “lump” seen by Li’s mother. The “mass” that Li’s mother saw was not a tumor. The possibility of incisional hernia in the abdominal incision increases rapidly with age. What are the symptoms of incisional hernia? The most common and the earliest to appear is the unintentional appearance of a lump at the incision, which is usually more obvious when exerting force (e.g. coughing, stooling, etc.) and shrinks or even disappears on its own when we lie down or when resting. In the early stage, the lump is often very small, usually the size of a pigeon’s egg or even smaller, but its enlargement is often very rapid, coupled with its sudden appearance, causing many patients to pay insufficient attention to it, and when they visit the clinic, the lump is already like the size of a skin ball, and the abdomen is like that of a pregnant woman. At the same time, it may be accompanied by discomfort such as loss of appetite, constipation, abdominal distension, and vague abdominal pain. If the disease is long, the organs inside the hernia mass often cannot return to the abdominal cavity completely, and some of them even cause intestinal obstruction, and the patient may experience nausea and vomiting, sudden and severe pain in the abdomen, and cessation of defecation and exhaustion, which can be life-threatening at this time. Is it serious to have an incisional hernia? Although the mass of incisional hernia is not a tumor, incisional hernia is still a disease that needs timely treatment. Because first of all, incisional hernia causes displacement of organs in the abdominal cavity such as small intestine and large intestine, which affects normal physiological functions and causes abdominal pain and distension that can affect normal life, and it is easy to have sudden intestinal tube impaction, intestinal obstruction, intestinal necrosis and peritonitis after exertion, especially in elderly people, and without timely surgical treatment, it is life-threatening. Secondly, incisional hernia has no possibility of self-healing and requires surgical treatment. Again, incisional hernia progresses rapidly and can develop into a huge incisional hernia in a short period of time. Delaying surgery will only make the treatment more difficult, and the postoperative recovery time will be longer and more expensive. Therefore, when an incisional hernia is detected, it must be treated promptly. With timely treatment, incisional hernia does not pose a serious risk and can be completely cured. How is an incisional hernia treated? An incisional hernia must be repaired. Traditional repair surgery uses unhealthy tissue from the edge of the defective tissue around the incision to forcibly close it, which is very painful, slow to recover and very prone to recurrence. In Shanghai Xinhua Hospital, the use of “patch” for tension-free repair is becoming more and more mature, as it is less painful, has a faster recovery, and has a lower recurrence rate, and has eliminated traditional repair surgery. In recent years, minimally invasive laparoscopic repair with less trauma and faster recovery has been widely carried out in the general surgery department of Shanghai Xinhua Hospital, and the fastest patient can be discharged in two days after surgery with a very low recurrence rate. After Li’s hospitalization, the doctor used an advanced surgical plan to repair the incisional hernia with a piece of artificial material (commonly known as a “patch”), just like a patch. One day after the surgery, Li got out of bed and was able to move around and eat normally three days after the surgery. She was discharged from the hospital on the fourth day after surgery. The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into. The actual fact is that, on the day she was discharged, her colleague, Mr. Zhang, came to see her in the hospital with fruits and flowers, but she was disappointed. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. She was discharged in four days? How is that possible?” After the doctor smiled and explained the difference between his traditional surgery and the surgery Li received, Zhang extended his thumb with great admiration: “Medical technology has advanced, the people are blessed.”