Patient awareness and symptoms from an incisional hernia

Incisional hernia is a common postoperative complication following open abdominal surgery with incidence varying between 3% and 20%. Approximately half of all incisional hernias are diagnosed within 1 year following surgery. In the United Kingdom alone, about 10,000 incisional hernia repairs are performed annually. Incisional hernia repairs are generally elective with emergency repair due to incarceration or strangulation constituting about 15% of repairs. Incisional hernia repair is not a low-risk operation and generally has relatively poor results due to chronic postoperative pain and high recurrence rates. Little has been published on patients' awareness of incisional hernia following open abdominal surgery. Moreover, there are very few publications on indications for incisional hernia repair and on the natural course of such hernias. The literature suggests that symptoms and complaints usually presented by patients include pain, discomfort, cosmetic complaints, skin problems, incarceration, strangulation, functional disability, and pulmonary dysfunction. The aim of this study was to investigate whether patients were aware that they had a hernia. In addition, we sought to determine symptoms for those who knew that they had an incisional hernia.