Nationwide analysis of open groin hernia repairs in Italy from 2015 to 2020

Introduction: Inguinal hernia repair is one of the most commonly performed operations in general surgery. A total of 130.000 inguinal hernia repairs are performed yearly in Italy, and approximately 20 million inguinal hernias are treated worldwide annually. This report represents the trend analysis in inguinal hernia repair in Italy from a nationwide dataset for the 6-year period from 2015 to 2020.

Materials and methods: Based on regional hospital discharge records, all the inguinal hernia repairs performed in public and private hospitals in Italy between 2015 and 2020 were reviewed based on diagnosis and procedure codes. For the aim of this study, data from the AgeNas (The National Agency for Regional Health Services) data source were analyzed.

Results: Elective inguinal hernia repairs outnumbered urgent operations over the 6-year study period, ranging from 122,737 operations in 2015 to 65,780 in 2020 as absolute numbers, and from 87.96 to 83.3% of total procedures in 2019 and 2020 respectively, with an annual change ranging from - 66.58%, between 2020 and 2019, to - 2.49%, between 2019 and 2018 (mean = - 18.74%; CI =- 46.7%-9.22%; p < 0.0001).

Conclusions: This large-scale review of groin hernia data from a nationwide Italian dataset provides a unique opportunity to obtain a snapshot of open groin hernia repair activity. More specifically, there is a trend to perform more elective than urgent procedures and there is a steady decrease in the amount of open hernia repairs in favor to laparoscopy.