Làm thế nào hình thức phẫu thuật đầy lợi nhuận đã lan tràn trên mạng và làm biến dạng bệnh nhân?

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The bulge (chỗ phình ra) on the side of Peggy Hudson’s belly (bụng) was the size of a cantaloupe (quả dưa đỏ). And it was growing.

“I was afraid it would burst,” said Ms. Hudson, 74, a retired airport baggage screener in Ocala, Fla.

The painful protrusion (phần nhô ra) was the result of a surgery gone wrong (cuộc phẫu thuật không thành công), according to medical records from two doctors she later saw. Using a four-armed robot, a surgeon (bác sĩ phẫu thuật) in 2021 had tried to repair a small hole in the wall of her abdomen (bụng), known as a hernia (chứng sa ruột, chứng thoát vị). Rather than closing the hole, the procedure (phẫu thuật) left Ms. Hudson with what is called a “Mickey Mouse hernia,” in which intestines (ruột non) spill out on both sides of the torso (thân) like the cartoon character’s ears.

One of the doctors she saw later, a leading hernia expert at the Cleveland Clinic, doubted that Ms. Hudson had even needed the surgery. The operation, known as a component separation, is recommended only for large or complex hernias that are tough to close. Ms. Hudson’s original tear, which was about two inches, could have been patched with stitches (mũi khâu) and mesh (lưới), the surgeon believed.

Component separation is a technically difficult and risky procedure. Yet more and more surgeons have embraced it since 2006, when the approach — which had long been used in plastic surgery — was adapted for hernias. Over the next 15 years, the number of times that doctors billed Medicare for a hernia component separation increased more than tenfold, to around 8,000 per year. And that figure is a fraction of the actual number, researchers said, because most hernia patients are too young to be covered by Medicare.

source: nytimes,