title: Laparoscopic repair of incarcerated inguinal hernia. A safe and effective procedure to adopt in children.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The purpose of our retrospective study was to describe the efficacy and the advantages of laparoscopic approach to treat incarcerated inguinal hernia (IIH) in pediatric patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  In a 2-year period, 601 children underwent a laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair, 46 (7.6 %) of them presented an IIH. Our study will be focused on these 46 patients: 30 boys and 16 girls (age range 1 month-8 years).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twenty-one/46 hernias (45.6 %) were reduced preoperatively and then operated laparoscopically (RH), 25/46 (54.4 %) were irreducible and they were operated directly in laparoscopy (IRH). We have no conversions in our series. The length of surgery in RH group was in median 23 min and in IRH group was in median 30 min. Hospital stay was variable between 6 h and 3 days (median 36 h).With a minimum follow-up of 14 months, we had 2/46 recurrences (4.3 %).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The laparoscopic approach to IIH appears easy to perform from the technical point of view. The 3 main advantages of laparoscopic approach are that all edematous tissue are surgically bypassed and the cord structures are not touched; the reduction is performed under direct visual control, and above all, an inspection of the incarcerated organ is performed at the end of procedure.
authors: Department of Pediatrics, Pediatric Surgery, Federico II University of Naples, Via Pansini 5, 80131, Naples, Italy. ciroespo@unina.it
authors: C
authors: C
authors: Esposito
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Turial
authors: F
authors: F
authors: Alicchio
authors: J
authors: J
authors: Enders
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Castagnetti
authors: K
authors: K
authors: Krause
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Settimi
authors: F
authors: F
authors: Schier
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006552:Hernia, Inguinal / Q000150:complications / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D010535:Laparoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D012008:Recurrence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D016896:Treatment Outcome