Laparoscopic Inguinal Hernia Repair in a Developing Nation: Short-term Outcomes in 103 Consecutive Procedures

Background: there are no published data on the outcomes of inguinal hernia repair from the anglophone caribbean. to the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a series of laparoscopic inguinal hernia repairs from the region. materials and methods: data was extracted from a prospectively maintained database of consecutive trans abdominal pre-peritoneal (tapp) repairs done between june 1, 2005 and may 30, 2012. perioperative data collected included patient demographics, hernia type, operative technique, duration of surgery, intra-operative details, morbidity, analgesia requirements, and duration of hospitalization. a telephone survey was also performed to identify late recurrences and complications. descriptive statistics were generated using statistical package for social sciences (spss) ver 12.0. results: there were 103 consecutive tapp procedures in 88 patients at an average age of 35.4 years ± 12.9 (standard deviation; sd) and average body mass index (bmi) of 28.9 kg/m² ± 2.23 (sd). the indications were bilateral (30), recurrent unilateral (24), and primary unilateral (49) inguinal hernias. the mean duration of operation was 68.5 minutes (sd ± 10.4; range: 55-95; median 65; mode 65) minutes for unilateral tapp and 89 minutes (sd ± 7.61; range: 80-105; median 90; mode 90) for bilateral repairs. post-operatively, 65/70 patients required ≤1 dose of parenteral opioid analgesia and 74 (84.1%) patients discontinued oral analgesia within 48 hours of operation. complications were recorded in six (5.8%) cases and a recurrence in one (0.97%) case after a mean follow-up period of 3.2 years (sd ± 1.8; range: 0.5-7). conclusion: laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair is a safe and effective operation in this setting.