Invited commentary

Excerpt

Herpes zoster is an extremely stressful and disabling disorder characterized by skin lesions and often excruciating and annoying pain localized to the corresponding dermatome. The patients, suffering from frequent and unexpected episodes of localized pain of different quality and intensity, often require oral opiates. As Dr. Dantas Oliveira and colleagues masterfully describe, when this disease involves the motor neurons innervating the abdominal wall, the corresponding muscles cease receiving nerve impulses and atrophy, producing hernias of different sizes. Under these circumstances, the resulting abdominal wall hernia becomes a frightening and annoying complication for which the patient will request surgical correction, with the expectation of a resolution for both the pain and the deformity. Dr. Dantas Oliveira et al. is to be commended for stressing the need to avoid surgery, as this pathological entity is reversible. We treated two such patients conservatively with complete resolution of their abdominal wall deformity. …