Two Years' Experience of the Operation for Strangulated Hernia at the Bristol General Hospital: And Its Lessons

The statistics of operations for strangulated hernia at St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's, and Guy's Hospitals up to 18841 show a mortality of 43 per cent.?a death-rate which, as Mr. Bowlby says, is greatly higher than is generally supposed. During the last ten years Mr. Bowlby has found that the mortality at St. Bartholomew's has been 35.8 per cent. He2 attributes the still high mortality of the antiseptic period to delay. He thinks patients die from exhaustion, from the compulsory starvation of several days' duration, and the vomiting and pain, and hardly any from the operation itself. After three or four days' strangulation he considers the chances of recovery are but small. Some very valuable statistics bearing on this point have been worked out by Macready3 from 129 of Reichel and Hagedorn's cases, all operated on aseptically: 12.5 per cent, died after one day's strangulation or less. 26.1 ,, ? two days' ,,