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For Immediate Release February 13, 2025

"It's a very, very common problem and it flies a little bit under the radar," said Adrian Martin, MD. "It can become a very significant problem with significant health consequences, especially later in life."

Dr. Martin is an SIH General and Robotic Surgeon. He recently spoke with dozens of SIH Second Act members about hernias. "

Generally speaking, hernia is one of the most common surgical problems that we see in our practice as a general surgeon. And overall, in the United States alone, there's well over one million, probably closer to two million hernias of all sorts done every year," Dr. Martin said.

He explained that tissues ages as people age and that makes patients more prone to hernias. Smoking, obesity, diabetes, alcohol consumption are also risk factors.

"Many of them tend to actually not be painful for quite a while, but they tend to get larger, so the patient makes some mild discomfort, burning, feeling of fullness or so. But the most common symptom is actually a bulge," Dr. Martin added.

Surgery is often the only option for hernia patients. Some may get better, or symptoms may lessen for some patients based on various lifestyle changes. 

Robotic Surgery Impact

"With the advent of robotics, the whole landscape of hernia surgery has changed significantly because we are able now to do with small incisions usually increased, sometimes for small incisions we are able to do procedures that we used to do, or we used to do open with a large incision. So, this has changed both the willingness of patients to underload these operations as well as I think the quality of hernia repair and which in return probably limits the recurrence rate of these hernias and the complication rate," Dr, Martin said.