Rare Hernias as Surgical Emergencies: A Case Series of Five Cases

Hernia is one of the most common clinically diagnosed cases seen in day-to-day practice. But some of them might pose a challenge in diagnosing the condition and, thus, their further management. Some types of hernias are rare and mimic the common presentation of the acute abdomen, thus requiring extra caution to keep hernias as a differential diagnosis in the acute abdomen. In this series, we report five cases of rare hernias presented to a tertiary care center in northern India over the course of one year. Two cases of paraduodenal hernias (PHs), a right and left, respectively, a male femoral hernia, an Amayand hernia, and an obturator hernia presented as acute abdomen in the emergency department, with challenges in their diagnosis, intraoperative findings, and their outcomes. Computed tomography is a useful diagnostic tool for arriving at the diagnosis pre-operatively in these situations.