Rare abdominal wall hernias in South Sudan

Abstract

The repair of abdominal wall hernias (AWH’s) is the most common surgical procedure in the world. In South Sudan there are two unusual aspects. As elsewhere, the most frequent types of AWH are inguinal and umbilical in adults and femoral and epigastric in children and babies. However in South Sudan there is a high incidence of what the Western medical literature describes as ‘rare AWH’s’. These, in our experience, are the Spigelian (Figures 1 and 2) and lumbar (Figure 3) hernias representing 9% and 12 % respectively all hernia cases. In addition we see a number of umbilical hernias (Figures 4 and 5) which may reach a large size and become confused with Busoga hernias.