Male1: Can a teenager have hernia surgery and who is athletically inclined playing football or baseball or what not, how long a period before he can go back and participate in his sport?
Male2: There the answer is a little different. First of all, the operation that we do for a teenager who has a hernia is a little bit different. In a baby, when we do the operation, all we do is find that inguinal hernia sac and stitch it closed. If you did that same operation in a teenager or an adult, the recurrence rate, in other words, the possibility that that hernia would reappear would be very high, maybe 40% or 50%, so in older kids and we use adolescence in teenage years as the cut off for adults, we not only close the hernia sac so that no more skin can go into it, but we take a piece of mesh, usually it is made of some material much like the Gore-Tex jackets that you may see, it is a little cloth mesh and we lay it on top of the repair of the hernia. Now what happens is, your body heals and the scar grows into that mesh and it makes a very strong repair. So in that situation, with teenagers, where we want the mesh to grow to have the scar tissue grow into it, we want the repair to be firm and strong and for the hernia not to recur, we usually tell them to avoid strenuous activity for four to six weeks.
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