How long can a hernia be left untreated? How urgent is hernia surgery? is it safe to delay hernia surgery? What are the dangers of not repairing a hernia? When Should You Not to Delay Your Hernia Repair? Should I Have Hernia Surgery Now, or Can It Wait? We answer all these questions in this article.
Is it safe to postpone a hernia surgery?
When a patient with a hernia is advised surgery, one of the common things they ask us is – “sir, should I go for the surgery immediately or do I have some time? If I have some time how much time do I have? Or how long can I postpone this operation?”. So why do patients want to postpone the surgery? The reasons can be many. They might have commitments at the office. They have to arrange for leave.
There are times when the patient is living abroad and wants to travel to their home country for treatment. The cause can be financial where sometimes the patient needs to put together the money required for the surgery. Or there could be a family function that they would want to attend before getting the surgery done. Medical reasons where the patient might have a more serious medical condition that needs attention first before we go to the hernia operation.
Reasons for wanting to get the surgery postponed can be many. Sometimes even the patient is not psychologically prepared to undergo and needs some more time to gain some confidence when she or he can undergo an operation.
Scenarios When Hernia Needs Surgery Immediately
So how do we decide which hernias need surgery immediately and which hernias can be safely deferred or postponed? If so, how long can you postpone it? One thumb rule about hernias is that any painful hernia, that has brought the patient in an emergency condition to the hospital, the hernia gets stuck, it is not going inside and the patient is having severe pain over the hernia needs surgery right away. There is no doubt about this. In such cases, there is no question of postponing such a hernia because it has already become complicated.
Scenarios Where You Can Postpone a Hernia Surgery
What are the factors that help us decide that hernia surgery can be safely postponed?
- A small belly button hernia – Generally, if the patient has a good muscle tone and has a very small belly button hernia which is not causing many symptoms and has been found during a routine check-up, we can postpone the repair of this hernia for a future date safely.
- Second, the patient should not have any severe cough or any severe straining like difficulty in passing urine or constipation when he has a hernia. Because in such patients the chance of hernia getting stuck outside when the patient coughs vigorously is high. So we generally try to avoid postponing this operation for a longer time and advise the patient to get the surgery done much earlier.
- Hernias that are not easily reducible. Like if the hernia is not going back freely, if the patient says every two weeks the hernia gets stuck outside, it does not go back in and then it goes back in after one or two days – these hernias we generally avoid postponing. We go for an early operation.
- And for people who have a hernia, who have a job or a habit of heavy work, like heavy weightlifting in the gym or heavy weightlifting in their jobs, we do not advise them to postpone the hernia. We rather advise them to get the hernia repaired immediately and then resume their job or heavy weightlifting or after three to four months.
- Then patients who have prostate problems – there we would advise them to fix the prostate problem as early as possible before going for hernia repair.
Conclusion – How long can a hernia be left untreated?
In considering whether a patient can safely postpone their hernia surgery, we must take into account a variety of factors. It’s challenging to define a ‘safe period’—for instance, suggesting a three-month safety window before risk increases is not straightforward. The decision involves a complex interplay of factors. However, we can generally determine which hernias require immediate surgery and which ones can be postponed for a reasonable time. It is important to note that all hernias should be repaired surgically. Hernias do not heal on their own; no hernia will spontaneously resolve or cure itself, and no medication can seal the hole and make the hernia disappear. Therefore, surgery is invariably necessary for all hernias. The timing and urgency of the operation will depend on the various factors we have discussed.
