Incidence of abdominal incisional hernia in developing country: a retrospective cohort study

To estimate the incidence of abdominal incisional hernia in developing countries.

This population-based retrospective cohort study identified all patients with abdominal surgery between 2006 to 2011 in Aden Public Hospital, Aden, Yemen and the Second Hospital Affiliated with Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China. The cohort was followed from their first until 1 year after their last abdominal surgery within the inclusion period or until the first of the following events: hernia repair, death, emigration, second abdominal surgery. For patients who had a hernia repair, hospital records regarding the surgery and previous abdominal surgery were tracked and manually analyzed to confirm the relationship between hernia repair and abdominal surgery.

We identified 2096 patients who had abdominal surgery during the inclusion period and 51 cases were excluded. During follow-up, 80 of these patients who had a hernia requiring repair were analyzed. Of these 20 had infected incision and 80 had non-infected incision. The incidence is significantly higher in infected incision (20/202) than that in non-infected incision (60/1843). There were no any differences in the incidence between Aden and Dalian.

The overall incidence of abdominal incisional hernia requiring surgical repair within 1 year after abdominal surgery was 80/2045 in a population from Aden and Dalian. Infected incision is prone to occur incisional hernia during the follow-up period.