If you are considering getting inguinal hernia repair surgery with Alpha Lin, let me walk you through why this is a terrible idea. Hopefully, I am able to disabuse you of the notion of getting surgery with Joshua Taipei Hernia Center for your own health and well-being. Here are 10 reasons why you should avoid getting surgery with Joshua Taipei Hernia Center:

1)  The Shouldice repair is a very complex repair. The creators of this repair, who have been modifying and improving it over the last 80 years use a relatively large incision to do the repair. Alpha Lin (a surgeon with minimal qualifications, who works at a shabby clinic, who has a fake center and a fake trademark, and who pays a below-average hospital to use their operating room) claims he can do the same complex surgery and only make an incision that is only about 50% the size of Shouldice because of a special little tool he developed. If the Joshua Taipei Hernia Center incision is 50% of the size of Shouldice, that means the Alpha Lin’s open operating area isn’t 50% of the size of Shouldice, but is roughly 25% of the size of Shouldice’s. The surface area of a circle is π r². Therefore, a 3 cm Joshua Taipei Hernia Center incision is 9π square cm; and a 6 cm Shouldice incision is 36π square cm. 

Joshua Taipei Hernia Center created a special little tool that was designed to push the intestines back into the body. Perhaps the tool makes doing that easier, but it doesn’t change the fact that Alpha Lin moves the complex surgery farther away from his fingertips and thus making a complex repair even more difficult to perform well. To reiterate from a previous webpage, the reason open hernia repair normally has a large incision is for visibility and precision suturing not due to the difficulty of pushing intestines back into place. Part of the reason why my surgery was so bad is the very small incision.

2) Alpha Lin creates unprecedentedly high muscular tension in your body 1) by combining the Shouldice, McVay, and Halstead techniques and he never does relaxing incisions and 2) by creating far too much overlap with the Shouldice technique. This is a gross display of pure ineptitude or indifference to your pain and suffering. All top surgeons use relaxing incisions for each surgical technique (Shouldice, McVay, or Bassini) to prevent excruciating tension and chronic muscular and nerve pain that come with it. Moreover, the more techniques a surgeon uses, the higher the tension becomes and in different places. The McVay and Halstead techniques are high tension and absolutely require a relaxing incision or the surgery will result in very high tension, pain, swelling, and pull your abs toward your grown making your abs painful to use in very basic ways. Alpha Lin often combines Shouldice, McVay, and Halstead techniques creating much more tension than the McVay technique alone and still he does not do a relaxing incision. The McVay technique stretches the lower part of your internal oblique and transverse abdominis muscle so much that it alters the way you walk making it difficult for you to walk normally. Moreover, he overlaps your tissues near the hernia site by 2 or more cm, an obscene amount that no reputable surgeon would do knowing the morbidity that it would cause. The resulting chronic pain from all this is so bad and widespread throughout your lower abdomen that no painkillers can really help.

3) Alpha Lin uses permanent sutures to suture a rubber ring to replace your inguinal canal’s deep or internal ring that was damaged during your hernia instead of natural tissue from your body. He does not inform patients that he is putting the rubber ring in their bodies. He does not get their consent. This is ILLEGAL. This is CRIMINAL MEDICAL MALPRACTICE. No reputable surgeons anywhere in the world do this because the plastic ring and permanent sutures are likely to irritate, compress, or impinge your spermatic cord, ilioinguinal nerve, or genitofemoral nerve, all three of which go through or adjacent the deep ring of your inguinal canal. If you have testicular pain after surgery, this is probably why.

4)  Shouldice Hospital uses mesh in 2% of their inguinal hernia repairs. Why? Because, even with a much larger operating area, sometimes hernias are too complex or the tissue is too damaged to use only a person’s tissue. According to the Joshua Taipei Hernia Center website, they never use mesh. 

5)  Alpha Lin touts his minimally invasive surgery on his website. If the Joshua Taipei Hernia Center incision is 50% of the size of Shouldice, that means the Alpha Lin’s open operating area is not 50% of the size of Shouldice’s, but is roughly 25% of the size of Shouldice’s. The surface area of a circle or the open surgical area is π r². Therefore, a 3-cm Joshua Taipei Hernia Center incision results in 9π square cm of operating area. A 6-cm Shouldice incision results in a 36π square cm, 4 TIMES the size. This much greater space gives surgeons much greater sight of the hernia and increased ability to make more precise sutures.

I had a 5 cm hernia and Alpha Lin made only a 3 cm incision. The hernia was about 50% larger than the incision. My hernia was medium/large in size. With a small incision and special little tool, Alpha Lin may be able to more successfully perform inguinal hernia repair surgery on small, uncomplicated hernias. It stands to reason, with my surgery being a clear example, Alpha simply cannot effectively handle medium/large and/or more complex hernia repairs, but he will try anyway.

Alpha Lin with his small incision often cannot perform inguinal hernia surgery with the necessary precision. And without the possibility of using mesh, the outcomes for his patients with anything but small hernias are likely to be bad. So, if you have a small hernia, surgery at Joshua Taipei Hernia Center may be okay. If you have a medium- or large-sized hernia or one with complexities, you are likely f###ed.

During my pre-operative ultrasound, the doctor simply confirmed I had a hernia and was not able to indicate how large the hernia was. Based on the ultrasound and observation alone, Alpha Lin often will not know the size or complexity of your hernia until you are already opened up. After seeing the size of the hernia, he could make a larger incision, but that would mean he would not be able to perform his highly touted minimally invasive hernia repair, which would be a blow to his ego. And I have learned repeatedly in my interactions with Alpha Lin that he would rather risk damaging your health than his ego.

In sum, patients with anything but small, uncomplicated hernias are likely screwed. So, let’s call the Integrated Hernioplasty performed by Alpha Lin and Joshua Taipei Hernia Center what it really is, “Inguinal Hernia Repair Russian Roulette.”

6) Alpha Lin cares about about 2 things: 1) a small incision size and 2) low recurrence rate. It sounds great, right? However, this is what he really cares about, not patient outcomes and the techniques he uses and his website are proof of it. Alpha continuously and proudly touts his minimally invasive hernia repair with low recurrence rates. But at what cost or how does he achieve that? The following 5 things about the Integrated Hernioplasty ensure you will have low recurrence but also lots of pain and complications: 1) Alpha uses no relaxing incisions. 2) Alpha uses sutures to suture a plastic ring to replace your deep ring that was damaged during your hernia. No surgeons anywhere in the world do this because the plastic is likely to irritate your spermatic cord, ilioinguinal nerve, and genitofemoral nerve, all three of which go through or adjacent the deep ring of your inguinal canal. 3) Alpha intentionally creates unprecedentedly large overlap in his surgical techniques. This also adds to the tension created from no relaxing incisions. The result is tension so extreme that no surgeons have ever seen before and they don’t know how to handle it. 4) Alpha’s small incisions equal less precision. Nobody else in the world attempts such small incisions, because it will likely result in worse outcomes for the patient. Whether your incision is 3 cm or 5 cm doesn’t matter much for you healing process. What matter is if the surgery lacks precision in the reconstruction of your body. 5) Alpha recommends physical therapy after surgery. This could actually make your pain permanent, because physical therapy in cases of high tension can cause permanent misplacement of your nerves. It’s better to take pain medication and wait before getting revision surgery.

7)  Alpha Lin’s small incision will often result in complications and the need for revision surgery. Qualified surgeons will have a difficulty in doing revision surgery with the small incision and are afraid to increase the incision size because they don’t know what your altered anatomy is like inside and they are worried they might cut a nerve or inadvertently cause other damage. All of this will make many surgeons reluctant to perform revision surgery, the difficulty of the revision surgery much higher, and the likelihood of you becoming normal again less likely. 

8)  Alpha Lin does not have a surgeon’s hands. While I was sitting in operating room garb, getting ready to go into the operating room, Alpha Lin came over to me and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you,” and gave me this undexterous, awkward, open-handed pat on the shoulder. It instantly made me very uneasy once I realized the lack of normal dexterity he has with his hands.

9) Alpha Lin will not say anything that makes him lose face. If your surgery is a disaster, he will not say anything to help you if doing so could cause him reputational damage.

10) Tissue repairs are very uncommon nowadays. Mesh has better and better results over time as compared to non-mesh, even if non-mesh surgeries are done well. Because of this, tissue repairs are becoming less common. If you have extreme tension or other complications, Alpha Lin will put his reputation before your well-being and few surgeons will want to touch your failed hernia repair. It is very complicated and risky to do revision surgery for this kind of surgery and few surgeons have experience with tissue repairs anymore.

Alpha Lin is simply an unskilled surgeon with a massive ego, who is willing to bet your health and well-being on his surgical skills. And Taiwan’s flawed healthcare system is there to back him up.

West Garden Hospital is part of the problem, too. They have seen this website and do nothing. West Garden Hospital also flagged my Google Review for removal when I updated it and insisted in my Google Review that they answer the following two questions.

1) How is it that you allow surgeons at your hospital to do only 3 cm incisions on 5 cm hernias when trying to use the Shouldice and McVay techniques combined?
2) Why do your surgeons not use a relaxing incision when using the McVay technique? if they What I have to say is too fact-based and damaging to its business interests.

The reason why they will not reply to these two questions is because answering these questions would require West Garden Hospital to denounce what the surgeon is doing or acknowledge that they allow medical malpractice surgeries.

For questions, please contact me at joshuafrauds@gmail.com