Our interdisciplinary team of experts at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, wants to help people with parastomal hernias so that they not only improve their quality of life — but go live it. A parastomal hernia is a large defect in the abdominal wall. Often, things that shouldn't go in there, do, such as the small intestine. Our team has vast experience seeing these patients and operating on them. Where most institutions do just a handful of robotic parastomal hernia repairs, we've done over 100 in just the last two years. The goal of the repair is not just to fix the hernia, but to fix the whole situation. This is because we treat the whole person. Whatever someone is dealing with, we want to help so that they can improve their quality of life and go live it.
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Pers stomal hernia repairs is not something that's routinely done in the local community and these patients are very challenging for a number of reasons because they've had prior surgeries or other issues that are related to their stoma. We have a vast experience seeing these patients and operating on them where most institutions maybe do just a handful of robotic peroral hernia repairs. Just in the last two years, we've done over 100. Those techniques are perfected by the more you do. Not only are we good at the surgical technique with these peroral hernia repairs, but we have a large ast toy team here of 17 nurses that are dedicated just to caring for ostomy patients. And that makes a huge difference. Most don't have ostomy nurses or maybe they have a wound ostomy care nurse, but they deal more with wounds than ostomy. So they're not familiar with all the products. They don't have the inventory like we do here because we are a larger medical facility. It's way more than just finding the right poaching system. Having an ostomy can really truly affect your life. We see thousands of patients a year. So maybe a patient has given us a tip that we can share with another patient. Our wound ostomy incontinence nurse team is probably one of the best in the world. One of the goals uh of our team is to make sure you're able to live your fullest life. And if hernia repair is appropriate and needed, then we can offer that as an option. The robotic approach to peroral hernias has transformed the practice for me. One of the advantages of a robotic peroral hernia repair is that it certainly translates into better clinical outcomes for the patient with lower morbidity, decreased length of stay in hospital and fewer types of serious complications. And then combining that with a Sugar Baker approach has been considered the gold standard for the lowest level of recurrence. What this does is places a large sheet of mesh inside the abdomen to prevent any type of defect that would allow another hernia to form. In our recent review of our own experience of robotic paranormal hernia repairs. Our rate is less than 10% of recurrence is within two years with a robotic peroral hernia repair. They're not in the hospital as long oftentimes they're out and headed back home within a couple of days. I think we're a great resource for referring providers. You know, sometimes um things are beyond, you know, what they've tried to do or can do. And so I want them to know that not only is it the surgical side, but the ostomy side as well because that can make a huge difference for patients. It's not infrequent that I'll encounter a patient who is referred for evaluation of a parasal hernia repair. And then the question comes up. Do you need to have the stoma at all? Because of their illness or other factors? The surgeons closer to home, feel uncomfortable, reversing the stoma. And in many cases, we can reverse the stoma and repair the hernia. It's about the whole person. So whatever they're dealing with, we want to help them with that so that they can improve their quality of life and go live it.
