Shouldice Research Paper
The Shouldice Method
Two young medical students were standing on a street corner observing people as they passed and discussing any abnormalities with each other that they may have seen in passers-by. They saw this old man walking sort of duck waddling down the street at a slow pace.
The two students introduced themselves to the gentleman and told him that they didn’t agree with each other’s diagnosis of the old man’s problem. One says, “My friend thinks you have a bad case of hemorrhoids, and I think you have a hernia.”
The old man said, “I thought it was a fart, but from the feel of it, looks like we were all wrong.”
Hernias are a condition that make part of your body organ poke through or protrude through the wall of the cavity that is containing it. The wall of the muscle tissue usually becomes too weak to hold it, and the organ than pokes …show more content…
through allowing one to visually see or feel it.
There are many varieties of hernias; Inguinal, Ventral, Femoral, Umbilical, Epigastric, and Hiatal to list a few (Ethicon). Hernias may be acquired or congenital, some may be reducible or nonreducible, some are benign while others may be life threatening, and some are internal while others are external. The Shouldice Hospital dealt with one specific type of hernia, the abdominal external hernia (Heskett 2003). The Shouldice repair method claims to maintain a 99.5% success rate on the inguinal hernia, which is said to set them apart from other medical facilities (shouldice 2013). The Shouldice surgeons have performed more than 360,000 operations, that approximately 700 hernia surgeries per day (shouldice 2013). The Shouldice method prepares the connective tissue and muscles of the abdominal wall into three separate layers. The bulging wall of the bowel/intestine is then pushed back to the inside of the abdomen. Each of the muscle layers is then repaired individually to strengthen and reinforce the abdomen wall
(shouldice 2013). The surgeons at Shouldice that repair the weakened abdominal wall do not just stitch and end the surgery, they look for other areas that too may have weak spots. Research has shown that “13% of people with hernias have a second weak spot in their muscles or a hidden hernia (shouldice 2013). Once all weak spots have been located and repaired, the operation is over and the recovery can begin. Patients that have hernia surgeries are able to walk out of the operating room and can perform light exercise the following day. The majority of the patients are fully recovered and back to a normal routine within a week of the surgery. The Shouldice method of surgery is considered the “gold standard” for operating hernias. The Shouldice method does take longer than the mesh technique which takes a woven material that patches the weak area forming a plug or extra layer to the abdominal wall. The Shouldice hernia repair method has been used and perfected for over 65 years and will continue to offer great success rates due to the precision and care they have for their patients.
References
Stevenson, William (2011). Operations Management (11th Ed.). Rochester: McGraw-Hill.
Ethicon (2013). Hernia Solutions: Johnson&Johnson Company Retrieved from: http://www.herniasolutions.com/about-hernias/types-of-hernias
Heskett, James (2003) Shouldice Hospital Limited: Harvard Business School. Retrieved from: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu
Shouldice (2013) Shouldice Hospital: Shouldice Surgery. Retrieved from: http://www.shouldice.com/the_shouldice_repair.htm
Two young medical students were standing on a street corner observing people as they passed and discussing any abnormalities with each other that they may have seen in passers-by. They saw this old man walking sort of duck waddling down the street at a slow pace.
The two students introduced themselves to the gentleman and told him that they didn’t agree with each other’s diagnosis of the old man’s problem. One says, “My friend thinks you have a bad case of hemorrhoids, and I think you have a hernia.”
The old man said, “I thought it was a fart, but from the feel of it, looks like we were all wrong.”
Hernias are a condition that make part of your body organ poke through or protrude through the wall of the cavity that is containing it. The wall of the muscle tissue usually becomes too weak to hold it, and the organ than pokes …show more content…
through allowing one to visually see or feel it.
There are many varieties of hernias; Inguinal, Ventral, Femoral, Umbilical, Epigastric, and Hiatal to list a few (Ethicon). Hernias may be acquired or congenital, some may be reducible or nonreducible, some are benign while others may be life threatening, and some are internal while others are external. The Shouldice Hospital dealt with one specific type of hernia, the abdominal external hernia (Heskett 2003). The Shouldice repair method claims to maintain a 99.5% success rate on the inguinal hernia, which is said to set them apart from other medical facilities (shouldice 2013). The Shouldice surgeons have performed more than 360,000 operations, that approximately 700 hernia surgeries per day (shouldice 2013). The Shouldice method prepares the connective tissue and muscles of the abdominal wall into three separate layers. The bulging wall of the bowel/intestine is then pushed back to the inside of the abdomen. Each of the muscle layers is then repaired individually to strengthen and reinforce the abdomen wall
(shouldice 2013). The surgeons at Shouldice that repair the weakened abdominal wall do not just stitch and end the surgery, they look for other areas that too may have weak spots. Research has shown that “13% of people with hernias have a second weak spot in their muscles or a hidden hernia (shouldice 2013). Once all weak spots have been located and repaired, the operation is over and the recovery can begin. Patients that have hernia surgeries are able to walk out of the operating room and can perform light exercise the following day. The majority of the patients are fully recovered and back to a normal routine within a week of the surgery. The Shouldice method of surgery is considered the “gold standard” for operating hernias. The Shouldice method does take longer than the mesh technique which takes a woven material that patches the weak area forming a plug or extra layer to the abdominal wall. The Shouldice hernia repair method has been used and perfected for over 65 years and will continue to offer great success rates due to the precision and care they have for their patients.
References
Stevenson, William (2011). Operations Management (11th Ed.). Rochester: McGraw-Hill.
Ethicon (2013). Hernia Solutions: Johnson&Johnson Company Retrieved from: http://www.herniasolutions.com/about-hernias/types-of-hernias
Heskett, James (2003) Shouldice Hospital Limited: Harvard Business School. Retrieved from: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu
Shouldice (2013) Shouldice Hospital: Shouldice Surgery. Retrieved from: http://www.shouldice.com/the_shouldice_repair.htm