Pain characteristics after laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair

Previous studies have shown different pain characteristics in different types of laparoscopic operations, but pain pattern has not been studied in detail after laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair. To optimise preoperative patient information and postoperative analgesic treatment the present study investigated postoperative pain in terms of time course, pain intensity and individual pain components during the first 4 days after transabdominal preperitoneal hernia repair (TAPP).

The study was a single-centre prospective trial including 50 consecutive male patients with primary or recurrent inguinal and/or femoral hernia undergoing elective repair. Several pain components (visceral pain, incisional pain and shoulder pain) were studied as well as pain at the three different trocar incisions. Pain was recorded before operation and on a daily basis during the first four postoperative days using a visual analogue and a verbal rating scale. We used 1 × 12 and 2 × 5 mm trocars for TAPP.

A total of 46 patients were available for analyses (age median 58 years, range 27-69 years). Visceral pain dominated significantly compared with incisional pain (P < 0.01), which again dominated over shoulder pain intensity and incidence (P < 0.01). Pain intensity did not significantly differ between different trocar incisions (5 and 12 mm) (P > 0.05). The overall pain intensity (a conglomerate of the different pain components) was most intense 3 h after TAPP and declined to preoperative levels on day 3 (P > 0.5).

Pain was most intense 3 h after the operation and declined to low levels within the first 3 days. Visceral pain was by far the dominating pain component compared with incisional and shoulder pain.