Our hearts go out to your son and family. I'm sure you will get a lot of responses. Adhesions develop within 2 weeks of having surgery. A lot of times what happens is that they tighten with time. There is no way of telling whether or not he will ever have an obstruction, many of us haven't had one (knock on wood) and hopefully never will. He may have to deal with this until some type of barrier is found to be more than just 50% effective.
My doctor always says "Unless they can give you an 80% chance of effectiveness, DON'T have another surgery". Nothing so far has made it that high. The closet would be SprayGel which is available in Europe, but not here. Their trials here didn't go so well. And from all I can gather from patients who have had the surgery in Europe (Germany) it's a 50/50 chance w/Spray Gel and the abdo-lift they use there.
Again, your son may have some discomfort/pain and a pulling sensation from the adhesions, but he may never have to experience an obstruction. Keeping his bathroom activities "regular" will definitely help him. High fiber diets however can cause more pain than they are worth to adhesion sufferers.
If he has a reoccurring problem, the best thing to do is to have him seen by an adhesion specialist ONLY.
We wish you, your son and family only the best.
Janine
-----Original Message----- Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 3:36 PM Subject: intestinal adhesions - 7yr old Sender: red29k@yahoo.com (Karen)
Hi! My seven year old had emergency surgery to remove inestinal adhesions about 3 weeks ago.