Abstract
Purpose: Recent treatment policy for inguinal hernia and the frequency of contralateral appearance was assessed with a questionnaire survey. Patients and Methods: A questionnaire survey about inguinal hernia was carried out at 24 facilities performing pediatric surgery in the Kyushu area. The contents included the sex, the age of operation from 2001 to 2003, the individual part numbers of the examples, operative method, number of contralateral examinations with positive appearance. Details about examples of contralateral appearance up to June, 2005 from 2001 were asked for. Results: From 24 facilities during 3 years, 5,686 examples were collected. There were mostly in the 1-to-3 age bracket for the operation, had a sex ratio of 1.3:1 (boy:girl), showed many lateralities in the right side to be few for boys and represented examples of bilateral simultaneous in about 10% of cases for both sexes. As for the technique, 95% was Potts' method. There was a total of 333 examples of contralateral appearance, which is a rate of 5.6%. The mean time from the initial operation was 18.5±20.3 months (from 4 hours to 10 years after operation) and 90% of the cases was within 3 years. There was a difference between age, sex and initial operation site. The most frequent rate was 13.6% in the case of a girl in the 1-to-3 age bracket whose initial operation site was left. Next was 10% in the case of infant boy whose initial operation site was left. At 20 facilities, contralateral examination was not carried out and laparoscopy was used at 4 facilities. The positive rate of contralateral examination was 34.1% in total.
