A few years ago, a Berkeley surgeon named Eileen Consorti, to whom I was referred by my primary-care doctor, recommended that I have an operation to repair a hernia so small I couldn’t detect it. I have already written about how she kept saying there was evidence such operations were beneficial but as far as I can tell no such evidence exists. (Dr. Consorti has yet to provide the evidence she still seems to think exists.) Okay, she overstated benefits. What about costs?
During a conversation about whether the operation was a good idea, I said operations are dangerous. I didn’t want to have one unless there was a clear benefit. She replied that nobody had died from anesthesia during one of her operations. But of course death is only one of the things that can go wrong. It turns out the general category of bad things happening during anesthesia is called undesirable events and the rate of undesirable events has been measured. In this study, the rate was 100-150 undesirable events per 1000 hours of anesthesia. My operation was simple; I estimate it would have taken one hour. So my chances of having something bad happening to me as a result of an operation without any clear benefit to me — but considerable financial benefit to Dr. Consorti — was about 10%!
In a discussion of the costs and benefits of the operation, she didn’t tell me this.
One undesirable event caused by anesthesia is the triggering of mitochondrial disease; one of my very young students died of it last year, caused by a routine tonsillectomy. She was ten.
The study discusses problems seen by trainees, with more incidents seen at the beginning of the school year. My guess is that incidents would be lower for professionals who have been on the job for years and working under a known and established routine. But that is speculation. I don’t know where one finds the information about the number of incidents per hernia operation performed by professionals. Another useful number would describe the count of threatening incidents per untreated hernia (of the type of hernia you have).
This is not an easy decision. I had one of those undesirable anesthesia events during my most recent hernia operations and it was alarming. On the other hand, many years ago I had an emergency hernia operation (diagnosed at 2PM, under the knife at 6PM), and it was bracing to hear later, from a co-worker, that a good friend of hers had died due to an untreated (incarcerated or strangulated) hernia.
In conclusion, I think you need more information to make your risk management decision. Unfortunately, I don’t know where you get the information, especially if you body isn’t sending any signals. Good luck.