The study provides evidence that poor access to healthcare leads to more deaths. Untreated surgical complications contributes to more deaths, increasing the death toll and causing adverse health outcomes in patients’ lives.
18,000 patients in 640 hospitals across 83 countries were studied and analysed. Researchers and experts utilised the patient’s experience of hernia repair treatment as a means to represent elective healthcare. The findings indicated that if inguinal hernias are neglected, a bowel resection might most likely be required. This surgical treatment further complicates matters as it is costly and has a slow recovery rate. The Lancet Global Health is the publisher of this study. Inguinal hernias can be treated with a simple surgery procedure.
Developing countries are in dire need of surgeries, researchers also discovered another shocking evidence, that there wasn’t universal access to mesh repair in low-income countries. An essential component in surgeries, mesh has been proven to reduce long-term hernia recurrence; it is also simple to place on the body, of low-cost and can be scaled to fit. This study was done by experts at the University of Birmingham, the NIHR Global Health Research Unit in Surgery.
The co-author of the study, Dr. Maria Picciochi, comments that increasing the uses of elective surgery can reduce the risk of complex and potentially risky emergency surgery, specifically when it’s conditions that can be fixed by simple and early treatments. Another co-author of the study, Prof Aneel Bhangu added that healthcare policymakers could make use of their findings as a surrogate of sorts, for other elective health conditions as well, strengthening the healthcare system and increasing its approaches to integrate surgery to other aspects of healthcare as well.
Targets of system strengthening includes educating the communities of healthcare workers on the symptoms of hernia, improving the referral systems and increasing mesh repair for hernias, a global quality improvement program for mesh replacement in hernia operations must be established, and improving the capacity to hold a simple and cost-effective surgery.
The findings of this study and the wider implications will be discussed by the NIHR Global Surgery Unit at the World Health Assembly on the 28th of May.
Nivea Vaz
Manipal College of Medical Sciences, Pokhara
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