School of Medicine

Acquired umbilical hernia (UH) is a common surgical condition and is usually associated with conditions that increase intra-abdominal pressure such as pregnancy, ascites and obesity. Despite the high frequency of their occurrence, umbilical hernias have received little attention in the literature relative to other abdominal wall hernias, and to our knowledge, therea re no studies that investigate the role of defects in the abdominal wall in the development of acquired umbilical hernas. We hypothesize that diastasis of the rectus abdominis muscles is a major predictor for acquired umbilical hernias. Method: We measured the inter-recti distance (IRD) on abdominal computed tomography (CT) of 100 randomly selected patients with UH diagnosis. Did a multi-linear regression analysis on R program. Results: 1. Increasing BMI is significantly associated iwth increasing inter-recti distance after diagnosis, the beta-coefficient is 1.26 and p-value is 0.0003. 2. Both BMI and age are associated with increasing IRD after diagnosis, BMI beta=1.067, with p-value 0.000134 and age beta=0.2556 and p-value 0.024670. Conclusion: In the preliminary results of the analysis of those diagnosed with UH, we can see the BMI correlated with inter-recti distance after diagnosis and along with BMI and age being associated with increasing inter-recti distance. The next step of the project will be the comparison with the control to assess if increasing IRD is the cause of UH.