Life-saving surgeries save lives. As incredible as that is, it is also important to understand they come with the consequences. Surgeons call those consequences complications and depending on the surgical procedure as well as many other variables. Those complications can be minimal at worst. That means it is something you can just more or less shrug off. It is not that all bothersome and other times, it can create a separate issue that is just as bad if not worse than some situations than the thing you were attempting to fix in the first place. Let’s have a look at some life-saving surgeries and their complications.
Types of incisions
To get into the deep structures of the human body for example the abdominal organs or organs of the belly, you are going to have to make incisions through the superficial anatomy. Whether that is a C section or a colostomy or a colectomy, you are going to have to make incisions through either the muscular tissue or possibly through the connective tissue. Read about the ways by which you can maintain a healthy environment in your home.
Healing and scar tissue formation
When the body starts healing whether that is through the muscular tissue or the connective tissue, that is going to form scar tissue. You do not regenerate. The only structure in the body that is capable of real true regeneration is the Liver. Everything else does what is called healing and healing at the best is only going to be 80 percent as strong as the original tissue that it is replacing because healing has some regenerative capacity to it but it also comes with a lot of scar tissue. You can think of scar tissue just like all the collagen proteins just being thrown down in an effort to stitch something close.
In simple words, scar tissue formed after the surgery will not be as strong as the original tissue.
Fistula
A fistula is just an abnormal connection between two epithelial surfaces but you can more easily think about it as two things are connected that should not be connected.
Types of Abdominal Fistula
Fistula happens all over the body and if they happen in the abdomen, that comes with its own set of consequences. If it happens with the trachea and esophagus, you can mix food into the airway.
The small intestine is going to be filled with digestive material with other enzymes. What if the small intestine gets connected to the large intestine.? You can prematurely be spilling the contents into the colon and you are missing a bunch of absorption or maybe the intestine gets connected to the Liver. It can also get connected to the Gall Bladder. There is a whole bunch of options of where things can start to become connected to structures they should not be connected to.
Is another surgery the answer?
Treatment of the Abdominal Fistula is really going to depend on a variety of things such as the size and location of the fistula. You are going to have to do something different if it is connected from the small intestine to the large intestine or the small intestine to the bladder. The patient’s overall health is going to matter because if they had surgery, let’s say fistula forms within a few days after the surgery. Their body is going to be in a complete state of shock.
Surgeries come with a whole bunch of things like antibiotic usage, immunosuppressants can be administered. So, when the body is in such a state of shock. To just recover it and surgically fix it right after another surgery is not a good idea. So, most of the surgeons are going to elect for the body to heal up to such a point that they can go back in and fix the problem. This process could take months. It could as long as one year of managing the fistula before you can even go back to the surgery. This is one of the reasons why it is considered a complication.
The less surgery the better
Surgical teams always put their minds together to figure out the best treatment plans for the patients. If it can heal on its own, that is the ideal situation because if you go back in the body and fix the fistula, you once again are creating another injury. You have to create more injuries to get into the site of surgery and you are increasing the likelihood of further complications. When you start to age, those complications become far more likely.
So, for the surgeons, even though their job is surgery, their real job is to perform surgery and hope that that’s it. You don’t want to have more surgeries unless you absolutely need them.
