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• Posted August 13, 2024

Men Face Much Higher Risk for Hernias Than Women, and Age Matters

At least 20 million hernia surgeries are performed globally each year, making it one of the most common medical procedures in the world. But does gender matter when it comes to hernia risk?

New Australian research says yes: Half of the nearly 436,000 hernia repair procedures performed in adults in that country between 2017 and 2021 were for inguinal (groin) hernias, with men accounting for 89.6% of those operations. And the age-standardized prevalence in men was more than seven times that of women.

Inguinal hernias were the most common type of hernia seen in the study.

Why are men more susceptible? Researchers say the gender difference is due to higher rates of smoking, heavy exercise, bladder issues, chronic airway disorders, hypertension and heart disease.

It’s important that doctors know "those patients who have higher risks of hernia repair, so we can develop health campaigns and policies to improve their quality of life and lower their risks of developing hernias,” study co-author Dr. Marianne Gillam, from the University of South Australia, said in a university news release.

A hernia occurs when one of your organs pushes through the muscle or tissue that contains it. This can trigger discomfort and abdominal pain and in severe cases can strangulate the bowel, which requires emergency surgery.

In the study, the team turned to data from the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare (AIHW) to crunch the numbers for five different types of hernia operations, identifying what age groups and genders were at highest risk.

What did they find? Males had a far higher incidence of inguinal hernias compared to females, with lifetime risks of 27% and 3%, respectively.

While folks between the ages of 60 and 64, and particularly men in that age group, were at most risk overall for any kind of hernia surgery, women were more prone to repairs of femoral hernias in the upper part of the thigh, and incisional hernias, a common side effect of abdominal surgery, the researchers found.

Still, when it came to surgery for abdominal hernias across all age groups, men were at much higher risk, although women between the childbearing ages of 20 and 39 were more likely than men in their age group to have an epigastric hernia operation (performed between the sternum and belly button).

The findings were published recently in the Critical Public Health journal.

Gillam noted that despite high annual rates of hernia surgery worldwide, few studies have tried to break those numbers down by age and gender.

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on hernias.

SOURCES: University of South Australia, news release, Aug. 8, 2024