Open Incisional Hernia Repair at an Academic Tertiary Care Medical Center

Objective: To describe the postoperative complication rates of a large consecutive series of patients who underwent open incisional ventral hernia repair. Design: Retrospective medical record review of an accumulated database. Setting: University tertiary care medical center. Patients: All patients who underwent open incisional ventral hernia repair from March 1., 2003, through February 28, 2008. Intervention: Open incisional ventral hernia repair. Main Outcome Measures: Postoperative complications, including hernia recurrences. Results: A total of 507 cases (465 patients; female to male ratio, 1.1:1) met our criteria; median follow-up was 40 months. In 23.5% of the cases, repair had been attempted previously, and 16.4% had previously undergone organ transplant. The postoperative complication rate was 38.1%. Hernias recurred in 18.9% of cases. Perioperative mortality was 1.0%. Patients undergoing transplant were more likely than those not undergoing transplant to have a hernia recurrence (16.3% vs 32.5%; P<.001) and were equally likely to have a postoperative complication (36.9% vs 44.6%; P=.19). Patients who underwent repair of a recurrent incisional hernia were as likely to have a hernia recurrence as those who underwent initial repair (21.0% vs 18.3%; P=.52) but more likely to have an overall complication (47.9% vs 35.1%; P=.01). Conclusions: In this series of incisional hernia repairs at a tertiary care center, the overall recurrence rate of 18.9% is comparable to that of other published series. Ours is the largest published series of recurrent hernias that shows a recurrence rate comparable to that for initial repairs. This outcome may be the result of greater use of more complex repair techniques.