The British Hernia Centre is Britain’s first and leading specialist hernia centre.
It is also the largest specialist tension-free hernia centre in the world.

Working with all leading health insurance companies, including BUPA, Aviva, WPA and the giant American insurers, Blue Cross & Blue Shield.

 

A concept well-established in the USA, The British Hernia Centre was the UK’s first specialist hernia centre and rapidly became Europe’s busiest specialist hernia centre. In later years, we became the world’s busiest specialist centre in tension-free hernia repair.

By concentrating on hernias (of all kinds), we are able to continuously develop the most modern techniques of hernia repair and thus ensure the best possible level of care for all hernia patients at very reasonable prices and without waiting lists.Since setting up this centre at the beginning of the nineties, we have concentrated our efforts in hernia, sometimes described as the ‘Cinderella’ of surgery. The result is that we have performed tens of thousands of cases of hernia ‘under one roof’ and – continuing to number cases by the thousand each year, our surgeons have acquired a degree of experience which is hard to match.

No single specialist team has performed anything approaching that number of cases, or has that degree of experience. As the years have passed, we have honed this specialised expertise to an extent that allows us to offer surgery of the very highest standard. In turn, we have been able to offer hernia repair surgery to patients who would otherwise be unable to undergo surgery by less acceptable methods elsewhere.

It gives me, in my capacity as founder and director, enormous pleasure to be involved in running a unit repairing hernias in patients aged into their nineties (and occasionally even beyond that), for whom surgery had not otherwise been an option for many years. Along the same lines, we have been able to successfully repair multiple-recurrent and incisional hernias for patients who have had repairs attempted elsewhere fail on them time and time again.

One of the most frequently asked questions from our patients is “Why doesn’t everybody do it your way?”. The three-part answer is that:

• Surgery is no different to any other walk of life. There are excellent surgeons and indifferent surgeons, just as there are excellent and indifferent accountants, bus drivers, policemen and all other occupations and professions. I believe that success starts with gathering only excellent surgeons.

• Most hernias are still being repaired by techniques that are less effective or more difficult to perform well. Not only are some techinques old-fashioned, but they also cause completely avoidable pain and risk, both during and after the operation. To succeed, one needs to devise, develop and perfect more modern techniques, using modern materials and acquired knowledge and expertise.

• Finally, one must specialise. Just as in any other walk of life, specialisation improves outcome. Unfortunately, hernia has not been the kind of operation that attracts many surgeons to specialise and also, outside of a specialist unit, they rarely have the opportunity of treating large numbers of hernias. It is not uncommon for there to be a maximum of just a case-or-two per week for surgeons repairing hernias among their other work. Clearly, by seeing hernias by the thousand, one is able to learn faster and go on to make improvements.

Indeed, patients coming to us today with recurrent hernias are starting to demand to know why their original surgeon (wherever they had it done the first time) used the old methods when this far more successful technique was already known and published. What can we tell them?

We have broken the mould in several respects and have inevitably attracted a great deal of attention. We have already amassed what is probably one of the world’s largest databases of academic information on hernia surgery results, performed in one place by one technique. We are in a unique position to devise, develop and perfect hernia surgery techniques to the great benefit of patients.

We do share our experience on an international level, with seminars, publications and conferences (such as the 1996 International Conference on All Abdominal Wall Hernia, at the Royal Society of Medicine in London – which we hosted) addressed and attended by leading surgeons from around the world.

Now that travel and communication has become so accessible, we believe that sharing this kind of knowledge on a global scale is now feasible. Not only do our surgeons share their knowledge to the benefit of all surgeons, but we try to explain hernia and hernia surgery to patients themselves, wherever they may be.

Ours was the first web site in the world to describe a surgical procedure. We were the first to give explanations of hernia on the Internet (and in simple, clear English). Today, it is ‘hit’ many thousands of times a day and we have been delighted at the countless messages of thanks we have received from around the world – including clinics in the wilderness. Even in the most civilised and developed of countries, it seems that doctors do not always have the time to explain to patients what they want to know. We hope we are meeting this need and are happy to do so for the benefit of all hernia sufferers. In fact, as you will see, we have tried to explain even the most complex of matters without it being dull and heavy going. We hope you will find this website easy to follow and extremely informative.

Dudley J Rogg
Founder and Director
The British Hernia Centre

 

To E-Mail us with any clinical questions, you can reach us in several ways from within the Contact Us page.