Washington—In 1988, Patricia Byers, MD, the first female surgeon on faculty at the University of Miami, just started the second trimester of her pregnancy when the problems began.
She developed a femoral hernia. After a long case, Dr. Byers, a trauma surgeon, would go to her call room, reduce her hernia and hurry back to the trauma bay. She hoped her uterus would eventually block the femoral canal to resolve the issue until the baby was born.
But, in the third