Truss (medicine)

A truss is a medical resource that can best be compared with a corsage.

It serves to prevent a hernia on the prolapse, and to the underlying abdominal wall as far stabilize that there is an improvement or the patient may be asymptomatic live with it.

For this purpose, there is a truss mostly from a tight leather belt, sometimes with elastic, where the pad, a plate ( initially made ​​of wood, later metal) is attached. This is set to the hernial orifice and to push back the break.

Nowadays, this measure is no longer applied, since the benefit is low, the harmful potential, however, very high. Mostly it comes to testicular atrophy with obliteration of the respective testis under the influence of the fracture belt. And the constant applied pressure leads to damage the tissue and skin ulcers, and the hernia breaks through the skin.

Therapy of choice for inguinal hernia is the alsbaldige operation. For this purpose, alongside the traditional open procedure ( surgery after Bassini and their variations, operation Shouldice or Stoppa ) also open and minimally invasive procedure with reinforcement of the bar by a polypropylene mesh (open Lichtenstein operation; minimally invasive: TAPP or TEP ) are available.

Trusses have been developed very early for the relief of this disease. From archaeological excavations were by 1992 more than 22 finds of trusses in Central Europe, with almost all come from a limited period of time, the Merovingian period.