Treating incarcerated inguinal hernias with TEP is a viable option for experienced surgeons

Despite inguinal hernias being a common problem in public health, there is still scarce information about the epidemiology of the complications, especially incarceration, and their influence on the laparoscopic surgical methods considering the role of the learning process of the surgeon. Compare laparoscopic totally extraperitoneal (TEP) approach in the repair of incarcerated and non-incarcerated inguinal hernias from the perspective of technical difficulty for trained surgeons. We obtained data about sex, age, location and type of hernia, surgery duration, ASA score, postoperative complications, previous surgeries and BMI. Groups were descriptively analyzed and statistically compared to verify how similar the samples were. 265 (90.1%) patients had non-incarcerated hernias and 29 (9.9%) incarcerated. We observed that there was no significant difference in the pattern of location (right, left or bilateral), sex, ASA, previous or complications between the two groups. Unilateral incarcerated hernias had longer operative times compared to non-incarcerated. No difference was found between bilateral hernias. We didn´t find significant epidemiological differences between incarcerated and non-incarcerated hernias. In our experience, with the limitation of a single-surgeon series, laparoscopic hernia repair achieved satisfactory results in terms of feasibility (especially for bilateral hernias) and safety.