Frequently Asked Questions

1. When should I start to suspect that I might suffer from abdominal or pelvic adhesions?Anytime you have persistent chronic pain or other disagreeable symptoms in the abdomen or pelvis after abdominal surgery, one can suspect adhesions. Contact us or your doctor to start the diagnostic evaluation.

2. Is there anything I can do to avoid getting adhesions from a surgery?
The most important goal in a surgery is a good operation with the best possible outcome. Since laparoscopic surgery is less likely to produce adhesions, a patient should always aim for a laparoscopic procedure versus an open one, as long as the clinical results of a laparoscopic operation are going to be at least equal to an open one.

3. Is there anything to keep adhesions from forming after surgery, such as exercise, good diet etc? If they form is there anything besides surgery to make them go away?
Once a wound is created within the abdomen and pelvis it is likely adhesions will form. What can worsen adhesion formation are complications, such as infection, after an operation. There is little a patient can directly do to avoid complications during or immediately after surgery. What you can possibly do to minimize the chance of complications is to be in the best possible health before surgery and have as clean a skin as possible. Choosing a surgical technique, such as laparoscopy, to minimize the size of wounds should lessen the extent of possible adhesion formation.

4. Will adhesions always continue to grow, or they s after a certain amount of time?
Adhesions will not continue to grow but they will reshape themselves. They tend to become more fibrous, thinner but stronger and with fewer blood vessels. Overall they tend to get tighter with time. Some patients have had 30 years or more elapse between the formation of adhesions and the onset of pain.

5. Is there anything besides surgery to get rid of adhesions?
If adhesions form you cannot remove or cure them without an operation.

6. If I have adhesions once, will I always have them?
According to one study, when adhesions were cut laparoscopically in over 50 women and they were re-examined with a second laparoscopy after a minimum three months waiting, 97% of the patients had reformed adhesions but they were not always the same adhesions that had been cut. Some-times they can be thicker, sometimes weaker. With time they change.

7. What parts of my body can adhesions affect, or do they mainly center in the abdomen?
They form where damage was done, but 7% of people who have never had surgery have adhesions. They can be born with them or they can form after trauma or infection or gynecological conditions such as endometriosis.

8. Why some people get adhesions and some don't?
Depends on the nature of the injury, how deep is the injury. Adhesions probably do run in families although this has not been demonstrated. There is always an attempt of the body to heal after injury. The less severe the injury the better the healing and the less likely adhesions will develop.

9. What organs can be affected by adhesions?
Any organ that has been damaged within a body cavity. Any abdominal/ pelvic organ, heart, lungs and spine are commonly affected.

10. What is the end result if adhesions keep coming back?
A poor chance of a good recovery in the future. That is why the best treatment is the prevention of adhesion recurrence.

11. Can I become disabled from adhesions?
Yes. If the function of your organs can be affected so much by adhesions, they can prevent a normal existence and that’s where disability begins.