People often push their bodies past what they are capable of doing. This is an issue that particularly affects older adults and those who perform physical labor as part of their career. You may try to ignore the pain if you know that your employer needs you to finish certain tasks. You may want to keep the same position despite discomfort or difficulty that wasn’t an issue a few years ago.
Sometimes, when you physically exert yourself too much, you can do real damage to your body. A hernia occurs when the pressure of lifting or twisting motion puts more pressure on your organs than the musculature and fascia around them can manage. A hernia involves organs or fatty tissue, often part of the digestive tract, pushing through a tear or gap in the musculature that surrounds it.
Left untreated, hernias can get worse and possibly produce life-threatening side effects. Unfortunately, one of the more popular treatments for hernias can fail and leave patients quite vulnerable.
Hernia mesh is a great medical advance, except for when it fails
Hernia mesh is truly an innovative and critical medical device. It allows surgeons to use artificial, metal or synthetic meshes to reinforce the torn, weak or damaged musculature involved in a hernia injury.
When hernia mesh procedures heal properly and the mesh itself does its job well, patients can largely resume the lifestyle and work they enjoyed before their injury. However, hernia mesh can and sometimes does fail. When it fails, it is almost always necessary to do at least one more surgery on the patient to correct the failure and possibly to address the hernia injury again.
There are several ways that hernia mesh can fail
As you can probably imagine, one of the more common ways that hernia mesh fails is by tearing or failing to remain in place to support the tissue around it once surgically applied.
In some cases, especially those involving some kind of contamination, the mesh can cause an infection or possibly prompt rejection-like symptoms in the human body. It is also possible for the hernia mesh to cause adhesions where it attaches to places it should not or results in the body developing a large amount of possibly dangerous internal scar tissue.
If you have experienced the failure of a hernia mesh operation, your medical needs and professional losses will likely impact you for many months. Discussing the situation with an attorney may give you options for protecting yourself and your family, such as a medical malpractice or defective product claim depending on the circumstances.
