[Patient-reported outcome measures after ventral hernia surgery]

Area of Science:

• Surgical outcomes
• Hernia repair
• Patient-reported outcome measures

Background:

• Traditionally, ventral hernia repair quality focused on morbidity and recurrence.
• Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly used to assess surgical outcomes.
• Assessing the impact of PROMs in hernia repair requires rigorous evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the impact of PROMs on patients undergoing elective incisional hernia repair.
• To evaluate the scientific methodology of studies reporting PROMs in hernia repair.
• To determine if PROMs have improved following different types of hernia repair.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review of existing literature on PROMs in ventral hernia repair.
• Analysis of PROMs data for large-sized incisional hernias.
• Assessment of PROMs data for umbilical and smaller incisional hernias.
• Evaluation of the scientific methodology and quality of included studies.

Main Results:

• A minor subset of PROMs showed improvement in patients with large-sized incisional hernia repair.
• No significant evidence for improved PROMs was found in umbilical and smaller incisional hernia repairs.
• The majority of data reviewed had questionable scientific methodology.

Conclusions:

• The benefit of PROMs in elective large-sized incisional hernia repair is limited.
• Current evidence does not support improved PROMs for umbilical and smaller hernia repairs.
• Further high-quality research with robust methodology is needed to reliably assess PROMs in hernia repair.