Could surgery be postponed because of my weight?
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Sep 21, 2018
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Dr. Scott Wilcher discusses whether surgery can be postponed because of weight.
Could surgery be postponed because of my weight?
There are times when I will postpone surgery until someone can lose weight. The most common thing I see as a general surgeon is people who have incisional hernias, hernias from previous surgeries. Those people, I really want to get their BMI's less than 40. So when they come in and they're morbidly obese with a BMI of greater than 40, I will say, we need to get your weight down before we fix the hernia. And the reason for that is that there is a much higher complication rate, a much higher mesh infection rate and a much higher recurrence of the hernia rate if you do the surgery while they're that overweight. So ideally, what we do is get their weight down and then do the surgery. Now, sometimes, it's an emergency. They have an obstruction and it has to be fixed emergently and then you do what you gotta do.