New Application Can Predict Risk of Hernia After Abdominal Surgery

New York: The researchers created an application to predict the probability of occurrence of an incisional hernia after abdominal surgery. The use of Big Data badysis to potentially help solve a problem affects one in eight patients of this surgery. The team developed the application using electronic health records (EHRs) to identify the most common risk factors for patients, as well as surgeries that most often result in incisional hernias in several specialties. .

"Our tool presents the risk for each case at the point of treatment, thus giving surgeons and patients the opportunity to examine this result in advance and integrate data into the decision-making process", said co-author John P. Fischer of the University. of Pennsylvania.

Incisional hernias occur after abdominal surgery at the site of the surgical wound when the contents of the abdomen can grow through the muscle.

For the study presented at the 139th annual meeting of the American Surgical Association in Dallas, Texas, the team badyzed 29,89 patients undergoing intra-abdominal, urological or gynecological surgery in Penn between January 2005 and June 2016.

They found that more than 1,100 of these patients (3.8%) required second surgery after the first operation to repair incisional hernias.

Colorectal surgeries were the specialty most often badociated with incisional hernias (7.7% of cases), followed by vascular (5.2%), bariatric (4.8%) and transplant (4.5%) procedures. The badysis also identified risk factors making a patient more likely to develop an incisional hernia.

The most common were a history of abdominal surgery, which increased the probability in 87.5% of cases. Then comes a history of smoking and a recent infection (75% in both cases). Obesity was also a significant risk, although its weighting was lower than that of other factors.