Infection and Recurrence Rates in Rural Inguinal Hernia Repair.

Introduction: Inguinal hernia repair (IHR) is a common procedure performed by general surgeons in rural community hospitals. Infection and recurrence rates for three types of IHR over two years at a rural Kansas hospital were analyzed. Previous research has shown outcomes regarding pain at six weeks were typically no different, and neither were long-term results, between open and laparoscopic techniques. However, there were fewer data showing the outcomes of these three hernia repair approaches in rural settings.

Methods: This was a retrospective, cross-sectional study using data collected from the electronic medical record (EMR) of a small hospital in central Kansas. Data from adult patients who had undergone IHRs over a two-year period (2018-2019) were deidentified and described using frequencies and percentages. This study used multi-variate logistic regression to examine the association of patient, surgeon, and surgical procedure characteristics on the occurrence of post-operative complications.

Results: Of the patients who received IHR, 46 were male and 5 were female. Mean age was 66 years, with a minimum of 34 and maximum ≥ 89 years. There were 14 total post-operative complications; two were superficial infections. There were no recurrences.

Conclusions: The sample size for each procedure type was too small to allow for statistical testing. However, the hospital had no recurrences. Future research should follow-up with this and other rural hospitals and perform a direct comparison of hernia surgery outcomes with those at a larger, more urban hospital, to understand potential differences by hospital size.