Thursday 24 March 2016

What’s a Parastomal Hernia

A hernia is a protrusion or a wrongful placement of the intestinal tract and usually, it’s via a weaker part of the body, or a defect as well. Hernias usually involve a defect including weekend openings, and also what’s called the hernial sac, and the content of this. Usually, a hernia will occur when an organ gets away from your abdominal wall. 

When that happens, especially with your stoma, and the pathway is around where your stoma is, it’s called parastomal, since it is outside the skin. If it’s via a surgical wound, it’s an incisional hernia. Surgeons usually make incisions to help create a stoma, and usually to help cut off the digestive tract from the other. Whenever you cut this, it does debilitate the strength of the wall. Sometimes, a part of the intestine may lodge up against the walls, and eventually pass through these defects too. 



Usually, parastomal hernias are one of the most common forms of stoma complications. It can happen in an asymptomatic manner, and it only is noticed because the area looks deformed. In some cases though, it can strangle or incarcerate the bowel, which means you have to go in for surgery. About a third of patients deal with this, and it’s also why there is a higher level of recurrence after they try to repair it. 

Usually, they try to prevent this with prosthetic mash, and usually, this is when the parastomal hernia isn’t able to be avoided with hurting, and it sometimes has to be dealt with after a little bit. Sometimes, parastomal hernias protrude out through the skin or settle within the inner parts and layers of your abdomen. 


Usually, these types of hernias come into four different categories. Typically they’re interstitial, where the sac is within the abdominal layers in the wall itself. There is also subcutaneous, where it happens on that part of the skin. There is intrastromal, where it penetrates into the ileostomy spout itself. And finally, you have the prolapse, which is where the sac is within the stoma that ended up prolapsing. The incidence of that usually is very small, or it can be in almost half of the cases, depending on stoma types, and the follow-up length too. Most of these typically don’t have any symptoms, but it can cause life-threating complications if you’re not careful. 

The Risk Factors 

Usually, if you have a few instances where you’ve dealt with this before, you may have some different risk factors inside. If you have had surgery before, there is a chance that it could happen again. The same goes for stoma location. Some are in more common areas. There is also some other factors including how old your are, how obese you are, any sorts of infections that are there, and of course, smoking and other risk factors. 

Quality of Life 



For the most part, you usually don’t have too many complications with this, but you may want to make sure that you buy and ostomy belt. Some people however that deal with symptomatic hernias deal with a much more debilitating quality of life, where it can make them feel a bit more worried, they’re dealing with pain, bulging, and it can make them need to use the toilet a bit more. 

Loose pouches is also a concern too, along with making sure that they are not feeling like they’re being looked at. There is also an increase of needing to rest and feeling tired during the day, along with that feeling of self-consciousness and a fear of going out as well for them.


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