IN MY VIEW . . . RATIONING ENDS UP COSTING MORE

THE decision by NHS management to ration hernia operations in parts of England, as the Mail has highlighted, is a grave error — quite apart from the discomfort and worse for the patients affected, it leaves the cash-strapped health service wide open to massive litigation claims.

This comes at a time when legal cases already in the pipeline have been estimated to cost £30 billion.

From time immemorial, medical students have been taught that hernias in the abdomen and groin should be repaired because of the risk of strangulation — where blood supply to the tissue that is pushing through the ‘gap’ in the muscle or other structure that should otherwise hold it in, is cut off, causing the tissue to die.

Small hernias are at greater risk of strangulation than large hernias. In any event (ie, large or small), hernia strangulation is a medical emergency.

My neighbour, a tough, strapping man who works in the building trade, went to his GP with a lump in the groin — it was an inguinal hernia but he was told that ‘it’s too small to be worth referring you for surgery, wait until it’s bigger’. The hernia strangulated, triggering an immediate operation which required the removal of inches of his intestine — major abdominal surgery.

And as gangrene had set in by then, the testicle on that side also had to be removed as the damage was so severe. My neighbour spent three days in intensive care.

This man had been subject to the wrong advice from an incompetent GP — or was it rationing? He nearly died. Hernia repair is not a worthwhile cutback.