New study: Operated for diastasis gets stronger and feels better

The care for patients with rectus diastasis - shared abdominal muscles after pregnancy - varies widely in the country. Many women choose to turn to private plastic surgeons and pay with their own funds when denied public health operations.

- This has previously been judged solely as an aesthetic problem, a beauty problem. But lately it has emerged that there are a lot of problems associated with rectus diastasis that do not have to do with appearance, says Karin Strigård, university consultant at the Surgery Center in Umeå.

She is part of the national working group that is currently developing guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with rectal diastasis.

Today it is recommended in the first bonfire stabilizing workout. Specifying exact criteria for which patients should also be offered surgery is a difficult consideration, according to Strigård.

- It is difficult to specify what exact measures the diastasis should have or what three symptoms the patient should exhibit. The symptom picture can be vague. Women with large divisions need not have any problems, and women with small diastases can have major problems.

The national guidelines are expected to be completed in the spring of 2020. Guidance will be the long-term study presented by the working group at a congress in Hamburg in September.

Some 60 women have been followed up five years after they were operated on.

- These patients had low quality of life prior to surgery, roughly in line with people with severe rheumatic disease. Now, the study shows that these women, when we asked them to estimate their sense of quality of life questionnaire a few years later, felt better than the normal population, says Karin Strigård.

Some women in the study had a net operation, others only had the abdominal muscles sewn together. Both methods worked.

- We could also see that you got stronger in the abdominal muscles. The study also shows that the surgery has been beneficial by allowing patients to return to work, for example, says Karin Strigård.