Expert: John Pilcher, MD - 7/12/2009

Question
hi i recently had a lap banding procedure done on july 6 2009 i was discharged from the hospital the next day.  Well i was rushed by ambulance back to the hospital 15hrs later for severe abdmoninal pain. Previous to that my mother called the hospital and they told her it was gas pain to walk it off.  It endend up being a hernia wrapped around my lap band port and i had to go in for emergency surgery to repair it because the pain was unbearable.  My question is did the surgeon do something wrong for that to happen?

Answer
Tiffany,
I'm really sorry to hear about your pain and struggles after your recent Band surgery.  I can imagine that you felt especially worried (and maybe a bit offended?) when you called the hospital with severe pain and they did not get to the actual cause so quickly.

In answer to your question, I am not hearing anything about the occurrence of the hernia that indicates your surgeon did anything incorrectly.  If I understand, it sounds like some of your inside parts (such as intestine) got trapped in a gap in your muscle wall that came from the Band operation.

The reality is that we surgeons must make small holes in the muscle layer in order to get inside the patient's abdomen to accomplish the Band placement (or any other surgery inside the belly).  In the VAST majority of cases, these small holes seal themselves within minutes of the surgery, and nothing at all happens at the place where the holes once were.  However in a few cases, usually for no apparent reason, the gap in the muscle fails to close and something that is supposed to stay inside gets trapped in the muscle layer.

The other possibility that may have happened is that something got coiled or twisted around your Band tubing inside your belly.  Surgeons really don't have control over what this tubing does after surgery is complete, but in the vast majority of cases the tubing and your insides get along quite well.

In any case, I hope that the problem got fully fixed and I hope you are feeling better all the time.  I also encourage you to ask your surgeon "straight up" if he/she will go over the problem with you so that you understand it completely, and it is OK for you to ask if there is anything he/she would do differently in the future based on the experience from your case.

Best of luck!
Dr JP