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Patients now have three options for inguinal hernia repair: open, laparoscopic, and robotic. To compare perioperative outcomes for these approaches, researchers identified 125,000 patients (nearly all men) in the Veterans Affairs Surgical Quality Improvement Program database who had elective inguinal hernia repair between 2008 and 2019. Key findings were as follows:
Overall, the proportions of open, laparoscopic, and robotic procedures were 81%, 14%, and 5%, respectively; however, in the year 2019, these proportions had shifted to about 60%, 20%, and 20%, respectively.
The overall 30-day postoperative complication rates were significantly higher with robotic surgery (≈5%) than with laparoscopic or open surgery (both ≈1%). By 2019, the robotic…