A surgically treated hernia can lead to complications such as inguinodynia, while an untreated hernia may be complicated by:

Inflammation
Obstruction of any lumen, such as bowel obstruction in intestinal hernias
Strangulation
Hydrocele of the hernial sac
Hemorrhage
Autoimmune problems
Irreducibility or incarceration, in which it cannot be reduced, or pushed back into place, at least not without very much external effort. In intestinal hernias, this also substantially increases the risk of bowel obstruction and strangulation. Causes
Causes of hiatus hernia vary depending on each individual. Among the multiple causes, however, are the mechanical causes which include: improper heavy weight lifting, hard coughing bouts, sharp blows to the abdomen, and incorrect posture.Furthermore, conditions that increase the pressure of the abdominal cavity may also cause hernias or worsen the existing ones. Some examples would be: obesity, straining during a bowel movement or urination (constipation, enlarged prostate), chronic lung disease, and also, fluid in the abdominal cavity (ascites).Also, if muscles are weakened due to poor nutrition, smoking, and overexertion, hernias are more likely to occur. The physiological school of thought contends that in the case of inguinal hernia, the above-mentioned are only an anatomical symptom of the underlying physiological cause. They contend that the risk of hernia is due to a physiological difference between patients who have hernia and those who do not, namely the presence of aponeurotic extensions from the transversus abdominis aponeurotic arch.Abdominal wall hernia may occur due to trauma.
Most abdominal hernias can be surgically repaired, but surgery has complications. Time needed for recovery after treatment is reduced if hernias are operated on laparoscopically. However, open surgery can be done sometimes without general anesthesia. Robot-assisted hernia surgery has also recently gained popularity as safe alternatives to open surgery. Uncomplicated hernias are principally repaired by pushing back, or "reducing", the herniated tissue, and then mending the weakness in muscle tissue (an operation called herniorrhaphy). If complications have occurred, the surgeon will check the viability of the herniated organ and remove part of it if necessary. Muscle reinforcement techniques often involve synthetic materials (a mesh prosthesis). The mesh is placed either over the defect (anterior repair) or under the defect (posterior repair). At times staples are used to keep the mesh in place. These mesh repair methods are often called "tension free" repairs because, unlike some suture methods (e.g., Shouldice), muscle is not pulled together under tension. However, this widely used terminology is misleading, as there are many tension-free suture methods that do not use mesh (e.g., Desarda, Guarnieri, Lipton-Estrin, etc.). Evidence suggests that tension-free methods (with or without mesh) often have lower percentage of recurrences and the fastest recovery period compared to tension suture methods. However, among other possible complications, prosthetic mesh usage seems to have a higher incidence of chronic pain and can also cause infections.The frequency of surgical correction ranges from 10 per 100,000 (U.K.) to 28 per 100,000 (U.S.).