Outpatient groin hernia repair: assessment of 9330 patients from the French "Club Hernie" database

Groin hernia repair (GHR) is one of the most frequent surgical interventions practiced worldwide. Outpatient surgery for GHR is known to be safe and effective.

To assess the outpatient practice for GHR in France and identify predictive factors of failure.

Forty one surgeons of the French "Club Hernie" prospectively gathered data concerning successive GHR over a period of 4 years within a multicenter database.

A total of 9330 patients were operated on during the period of the study. Mean age was 61.8 (1-100) years old and 8245 patients (88.4%) were males. 6974 GHR (74.7%) were performed as outpatient procedures. In 262 patients (3.6%), the outpatient setting, previously selected, did not succeed. Upon multivariate analysis, predictive factors of ambulatory failure were ASA grade ≥ III (OR 0.42, p < 0.001), bilateral GHR (OR 0.47, p < 0.001), emergency surgery for incarcerated hernia (OR 0.10, p < 0.001), spinal anesthesia (OR 0.27, p < 0.001) and occurrence of an early post-operative complication (OR 0.07, p < 0.001). The more frequent complications were acute urinary retention and surgical site collections. 2094 patients (21.5%) were not selected preoperatively for 1-day surgery.

More than 74% of the patients benefited from outpatient surgery for GHR with a poor failure rate. Predictive factors of outpatient GHR failure were ASA grade ≥ III, bilateral GHR, emergency surgery for incarcerated hernia, spinal anesthesia and occurrence of an early post-operative complication. Ambulatory failures were often related to social issues or medical complications. Outpatient surgery criteria could become less restrictive in the future.