EIGHT-YEAR EXPERIENCE OF INGUINAL HERNIAS REPAIR: A SERIES OF 1540 PATIENTS

Objective: Hernia repair is a surgical procedure as old as the history of surgery. All hernia repair methods have been developed with the aim of reducing cost, recurrence rate and postoperative pain. In this study, the recurrence rates of different surgical procedures were evaluated retrospectively. Materials and Method: We evaluated retrospectively 1540 patients operated on between 1992 and 2000 in Gazi University, Faculty of Medicine Department of General Surgery. Only 514 of them were well documented. The patients were divided into groups according to demographic features, diagnoses, applied surgical techniques, time of surgical intervention, and recurrence, and comparisons were performed. Results: Lichtenstein Tension Free repair, anatomic repair and laparoscopic repair were applied in 61.5%, 33.5% and 5.1% of cases, respectively. There is no significant difference between the recurrence rates of hernia repair. When the patients were divided into two groups according to operation year (1992-1996 and 1997-2000), in the first four years the recurrence rates of the repair methods were similar but in the second four years the recurrence rate of anatomic repairs was threefold higher (p>0.05). Conclusion: Lichtenstein Tension Free repair is a hernia repair method that can be applied safely with low recurrence rates in general surgery clinics.