Question

I have an umbilical hernia. When should one consult a physician about an umbilical hernia that just popped up recently?

Answer

There are several layers or sets of muscles and tissues that make up the front of your abdomen. These layers serve to keep your internal organs protected from the outside world. If you were to draw a line in the very middle of your abdomen, running up and down, through the navel, this is the called the midline, where all these muscles meet. They don't actually overlap or cross each other at the midline, but they all meet up together there.

The navel or umbilicus is the point through which you receive blood from your mother when you are still a baby in the womb. So, the umbilicus can be a natural point of weakness in all these muscle layers that come together to form the abdominal wall.

An umbilical hernia is a gap or small hole in between the muscle tissues or layers (called "fascia") through which the baby blood vessels once went. This hernia or gap can slowly get wider or bigger over time.

To answer your specific question, if it is a very small umbilical hernia, it does not need surgical attention right away. If the gap can be felt, by slowly pushing in on the navel, and feeling the "ring" of normal tissue around it, and the hernia is about an inch wide or wider, then it would be appropriate to seek surgical attention to have it fixed.

The danger with a hernia of that size is that it can have bowel or intestine trapped in it, (known as an incarcerated hernia), and that would require an emergency operation to relieve the bowel.

If the umbilical hernia has been there for a long time, and it is very large, there is no extreme rush to get it fixed, but it should be checked by a surgeon and have it done sometime soon.