Minimally Invasive Surgeons Brenda Zosa and Alisa Coker answer questions on ventral hernia repair. Questions include: How to know when a patient should have surgery, the advantages of laparoscopic ventral hernia repair, when a patient is a candidate for robotic assisted ventral hernia repair, and what recovery looks like.
really any patient who has a ventral hernia deserves a consultation to discuss options for repair. In particular, those who are symptomatic who have chronic pain or who have ever had an intestinal obstruction related to their hernia. The main advantages to a laparoscopic approach to ventral hernia repairs is that patients have a much quicker recovery and we see a significant decrease in wound complications. Most of these procedures are able to be done on an outpatient basis where patients go home the same day. In general, if a patient is a candidate for a laparoscopic repair, they're also a candidate for a robotic repair. I think it's important to stress that there are many types of hernias and each patient is very different and their characteristics and their desired outcome. Uh And so the ability to come to a center like ours where we have a comprehensive approach and really look at each individual and decide what is the best option for them. And sometimes it may be open and sometimes it's laproscopic and sometimes it's robotic, but we're able to offer them all of those approaches After a minimally invasive hernia repair. You can expect that most patients are either able to go home that day or the following day for all of our patients, whether it's an open approach or a minimally invasive approach. We do have an advanced recovery pathway that we follow and that's really geared at getting the patients out of the hospital as soon as possible and back to their daily lives. It involves things like reducing narcotic use and advancing their diet as soon as possible
