Inguinal hernia in infants and children in China

Abstract

Inguinal hernia repair for children and infants is one of the most common operations done as day surgery in China. In a series of 11,272 cases in Beijing Children's Hospital, 10,101 (89.6%) were performed as day cases. Of 1,171 hospitalized patients, 633 (54%) had incarcerated hernias. The standard procedures of day-surgery repair include a small transverse incision at the external ring, high ligation of the sac, and a constriction stitch on the external ring. Many reports involving thousands of day-surgery herniorrhaphies performed by community surgeons with no mortality or remarkable complications have been presented in the last 10 years in the Chinese literature. Most surgeons prefer to perform the repair in children between the ages of 6 months and 6 years, while some neonatal surgeons have done many in the first few days after birth. The problems of recurrence, latent contralateral hernia, sliding hernia, congenital hernia, incarceration, and common complications are discussed.