European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background: Complicated external hernia is common and serious; no definitive clinical criterion is able to differentiate strangulation or infarction. Surgeons therefore, have difficulty in choosing the appropriate treatment (manual reduction or emergent operation) and determining the ideal approach for these cases. This study was aimed at identifying the risk factors for developing complicated hernias and its predictive factors.
Methods: This is a prospective observational study of 53 cases with clinical diagnosis of all types and varieties of irreducible hernia. The patient information regarding type of hernia, time duration before occurrence of irreducibility, duration of irreducibility, type of complication of irreducible hernia and presenting symptoms were collected and  analysis was done by SPSS software version 2.
Results: Majority of the cases of irreducible hernias were males (77%) seen in 5th and 6th decade (47.2%). Contents of hernia and duration of irreducibility were significantly associated with viability of contents of hernia. Majority of the hernias with bowel as content and those with increased duration to irreducibility were non-viable. The Sensitivity and Specificity of ultrasound viability were found to be 50%, and 100% respectively in detecting the viability of hernia.
Conclusions: The factors affecting the viability of contents of hernia in our study are mainly contents of hernia and duration of irreducibility. Bowel as the content of hernia and increased duration to irreducibility poses higher risk for viability of contents of hernia.