Inguinal Hernia Repair: Are the Results from a General Hospital Comparable to Those from Dedicated Hernia Centres?

Introduction: We aimed to report the outcomes of inguinal hernia repair performed at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and compare them with those performed at dedicated hernia centres.

Methods: We retrospectively analysed the medical records and telephone interviews of 520 patients who underwent inguinal hernia repair in 2010.

Results: The majority of the patients were male (498 [95.8%] men vs. 22 [4.2%] women). The mean age was 59.9 ± 15.7 years. Most patients (n = 445, 85.6%) had unilateral hernias (25.8% direct, 64.3% indirect, 9.9% pantaloon). The overall recurrence rate was 3.8%, with a mean time to recurrence of 12.0 ± 8.6 months. Risk factors for recurrence included contaminated wounds (odds ratio [OR] 50.325; p = 0.004), female gender (OR 8.757; p = 0.003) and pantaloon hernias (OR 5.059; p = 0.013). Complication rates were as follows: chronic pain syndrome (1.2%), hypoaesthesia (5.2%), wound dehiscence (0.4%), infection (0.6%), haematoma/seroma (4.8%), urinary retention (1.3%) and intraoperative visceral injury (0.6%). Most procedures were open repairs (67.7%), and laparoscopic repair constituted 32.3% of all the inguinal hernia repairs. Open repairs resulted in longer operating times than laparoscopic repairs (86.6 mins vs. 71.6 mins; p < 0.001), longer hospital stays (2.7 days vs. 0.7 days; p = 0.020) and a higher incidence of post-repair hypoaesthesia (6.8% vs. 1.8%; p = 0.018). However, there were no significant differences in recurrence or other complications between open and laparoscopic repair.

Conclusion: A general hospital with strict protocols and teaching methodologies can achieve inguinal hernia repair outcomes comparable to those of dedicated hernia centres.