Hernia operations are among the most common surgical procedures performed today. In fact about 750,000 hernia repairs are performed annually. Although these hernias are most frequent in men, women comprise about 10 percent of the patient population.

Most hernias result from a tear in the deep lining, or fascia, beneath the abdominal muscles in the groin region. Once this "safety net" is torn, the intestines break through the overlying muscle layers pushing up to the skin surface, giving the characteristic bulge. In many cases, this process begins at birth and is an inherited condition affecting people of all age groups, from infants to seniors. Signs and symptoms that can be associated with inguinal hernias include pain, pressure, burning, bulging in the groin, and enlargement of the scrotum. However, many inguinal hernia patients present only with fullness or bulging in the groin without any symptoms at all.

Traditional methods of hernia repair typically require a general anesthetic, a four to six week painful recovery and are associated with failure rates as high as twenty to twenty five percent. Unfortunately once a hernia repair has failed, subsequent surgical repairs have much higher failure rates. More recently, laproscopic (keyhole) hernia surgery has been popularized as a great advancement in the repair of hernias. However, major drawbacks of this method include the need for a general anesthetic, insertion of catheters in the bladder and stomach, and failure rates in the vicinity of six to fifteen percent. Most important of all, this technique needlessly exposes the patient to countless life threatening catastrophic complications that no other method of inguinal hernia repair does. Many centers have now abandoned the laproscopic approach for inguinal hernias.

Using a modification of the Shouldice (Canadian) repair, our surgery is performed with lasers using local anesthesia and intravenous sedation (twilight sleep). A small one to two-inch incision is placed low in the groin. In most cases a mesh reinforcement is utilized to bond the weakened fascia after reconstructing it. Patients are discharged within one to two hours following the procedure. Most patients are able to resume their full range of activities without restriction two to three days following the surgery. This includes jogging, weightlifting, golf, and resumption of heavy work. Evidencing our specialization in the field of hernia surgery, our failure rate is well under one percent in thousands of cases. It is little wonder that we have become a national referral center for hernia surgery, attracting patients from as far as California, Texas, Florida and Alaska, just to name a few. Many patients have had successful inguinal hernia repair surgery at the Hernia Center of Ohio after having had as many as eight to ten failed repairs at outside institutions.

Dr. David Grischkan, the medical director of the Hernia Center, trained in Canada and pioneered the development of outpatient hernia surgery in the United States. He has lectured extensively at numerous universities in the United States and at international symposiums in Europe. Dr. Grischkan was a lead researcher in a recently published study of a new prosthetic material for hernia surgery. With a personal experience of thousands of surgical repairs, Dr. Grischkan is regarded as an authority in the field of hernia surgery.