Hernia surgery for the third millennium. Does classical herniorraphy still play a role?

The steadily increasing use of prosthetic grafts in hernia repairs can be said to play down the classical approach for repairing groin hernia. We retrospectively report on 894 patients operated on for groin hernia at our out-patient surgery clinic from June 1992 to May 1998. Herniorraphy was widely performed (96.3%). The recurrence rate was of 1.6% (overall). For patients younger than 45 yr with no systemic concurrent disease, as few as 0.1% relapsed after a 58-month average follow-up. According to our results, ambulatory herniorraphy can provide an excellent degree of efficiency in selected young patients suffering from indirect unilateral primary groin hernia. Likewise, we regard the prosthetic repair as the gold standard technique in those patients with a weakened posterior inguinal wall.