There are a handful of surgeons on the whole planet who can surgically remove adhesions with the meticulous surgical technique which won't do more damage. They have maybe 60-80% success rates with adhesiolysis. And there is an adhesion barrier called spray-gel which is not approved for use in the US which allows the world's best surgeons to get success rates more like 95-99%. Somewhere between 10 and 20 of the members of this board (I've lost count) have travelled to Germany, or live in the UK or in Australia, and they have had adhesiolysis surgery with the best surgeons using spray-gel and they have ended up adhesion free. On the one hand the members of this board are NOT a properly constructed scientific sample. So the percent of failures and successes from this group is not a particularly good prediction for the whole population of the world as a whole. On the other hand, those 10-20 people have had a 100% success rate in becoming adhesion free. So no matter what the actual odds turn out to be, I can tell you that this is the first thing out there that has odds that are truly excellent.
That said, I want to come back to my earlier point... Your question was phrased as "do they require surgery to correct?" Other people have said things like, "the adhesion pain is so bad that I need to have surgery." Or "I can't stand it I'm just going to have to give in and have another surgery." Folks say things like this because they don't know the fundamental truth of adhesions... People with adhesions are frequently mislead. They are lead to believe that they have two choices -- they can live with the effects of adhesions or they can take the risks of surgery and get rid of the adhesions. The truth is a far bleaker thing: adhesions are THE main risk of surgery. Your choice (unless you go to one of the few specialists out there who knows what he is doing) is between living with the effects of adhesions or having surgery and having to live with far worse effects from adhesions. Or dying from the adhesions.
At Wed, 26 Feb 2003, Phil Bryce wrote:
>
>I had a portion of my colon removed (cancer), and they created an
>iliostomy. Six times in the two months since the surgery, I have had
>what appeared to be a plugged ostomy (no output). The last time it
>happened, they took x-rays and said that there may be adhesions in the
>bowel. Do these bowel adhesions mitigate themselves or improve with
>time? Or do they require surgery to correct?
>
>thanks,
>Phil Bryce
-- cathy :-)