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Most guidelines and expert opinions recommend surgical closure of umbilical hernias when children are 3 to 5 years old. However, solid data on the timing of spontaneous closure is somewhat sparse, making shared decision making with parents difficult. In this retrospective population-based study, researchers evaluated data from electronic health records of 168,000 children in New England and identified 4486 children younger than 6 years who received diagnoses of umbilical hernia at a median 2 months of age. Patients who underwent surgical closure before 5 years of age were excluded.
The overall rate of spontaneous closure within 5 years was 90% for small hernias (≤1 cm) and 80% for large hernias (>1 cm). For all hernias, 82% had closed sponta…