Recurrence and complications of pediatric inguinal hernia repair over 5 years

Introduction and aim Inguinal hernia is one of the most common pediatric diseases in children and it presents most commonly during the first year of life. The aim of this study was to determine epidemiologic indexes and complications of inguinal hernia repair in pediatric patients who underwent inguinal hernia surgery. Patients and methods This retrospective study was carried out in the Imam Khomeini and the Abuzar hospitals. All inpatients who underwent surgery for inguinal hernia from 2003 to 2004 were included in this study. Their hospital records were reviewed till 2007 for age, sex, wound infection, recurrence, and other complications. The chi(2)-test was used for analysis using SPSS, version 13.0. Results In this study, 269 children were included. Of all the patients, 237 (88.1%) were boys and 32 (11.9%) were girls (P<0.001). The median age at the first reference to the surgeon was 2.93 years. Right-side and left-side inguinal hernia was observed in 136 (50.55%) and 92 (34.20%) cases, respectively. Bilateral inguinal hernia was observed in 41 (15.25%) cases. The frequency of recurrence was 2.2%, and was observed only in boys. Postoperative complications were observed in 5.2% of the cases. The most common of them was anesthetic complication. Conclusion Most of the cases involved male patients. All of the recurrences were in male patients. Postoperative complications were observed in 5.2% of the cases. (C) 2013 Annals of Pediatric Surgery.