Preventing Surgical Adhesions: A Women’s Health Risk
Surgical adhesions occur any time a surgical procedure is performed, however with the rising number of c-sections and other surgical procedures common to women it’s important for women to understand that adhesions are capable of causing problems such as bowel obstruction, blockage of the intestines and fallopian tubes causing infertility and pain.
Additionally for women who have already had a c-section, subsequent c-section procedures will often take longer, this is most often due to the amount of c-section adhesion & scar tissue that a doctor has to maneuver through to get the baby out.
This is not to scare anyone or cause undue panic as for most women adhesions never present any type of problem at all, but I’m guessing that most women would want reduce their risk and be informed about adhesions, especially before surgery, so that they can understand how to protect themselves from getting adhesions or from suffering undue complications.
The unfortunate thing is that once adhesions form they can be very hard to get rid of. There are procedures such as Visceral Manipulation or massage therapy that can help break up adhesions helping relieve the pain but it won’t get rid of the adhesions. For women with excessive abdominal adhesions they are generally treated with Laparoscopic surgery or less invasive surgery to remove them.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to take measures to help prevent adhesions or limit their impact before ever having surgery. Here’s what you can do:
Discuss adhesions with your doctor before surgery asking your doctor about using minimally invasive surgical procedures for things like hysterectomy, tubal ligation or cyst removal.
When having a c-section inquire about using minimal scarring surgical techniques, reducing bleeding, keeping tissues moist and the use of adhesion prevention barriers such as Seprafilm© to keep the tissues from sticking to each other.
It seems that every woman’s body handles scarring differently. With my last 3 c-sections, I did not have any significant scarring. However, my doctor said it wouldn’t surprise him if I did have some scarring in the future (as I’m preparing for c-section #5 this Spring).
I mentioned a film such as the one you mentioned on here. He said that it can actually cause scarring sometimes, so he prefers not to use it, especially if everything has gone well with c-sections in the past.