Abstract
Purpose: To examine the effectiveness of taping treatment for infantile umbilical hernia, a retrospective questionnaire survey was carried out in the pediatric surgery institutes in the Kyushu Pediatric Surgery Study Group.
Methods: Infants with umbilical hernia registered from January 2013 to December 2015 were included in this study. Their therapeutic results were assessed at the end of June 2016.
Results: Replies were obtained from 24 institutes. Cure was judged on the basis of the closure of the hernia orifice. The number of infants who underwent the taping treatment was 1,320. Cure was achieved in 908 infants, whereas no cure was found in 158 infants; 48 infants dropped out owing to skin disorders and results were not known in 206. Among the 333 infants in whom monitoring without treatment was performed, spontaneous cure was seen in 146 infants and no cure in 111 infants; results were not known in 76. The cure rate of taping treatment was significantly higher than that of monitoring without treatment (85.2% vs. 56.8%, p<0.05, χ2 test). Furthermore, the duration until cure was less than 4 months in about 80% of the infants with taping treatment, whereas the duration in many infants monitored without treatment was more than 1 year.
Conclusions: The taping treatment for infantile umbilical hernia shortened the duration until cure, but the cure rate of this treatment did not exceed the 90% spontaneous cure rate of the untreated patients at 2 years of age as described in conventional textbooks. However, the spontaneous cure rate found by our questionnaire survey was unexpectedly low. Therefore, the spontaneous cure rate of infantile umbilical hernia should be further investigated by prospective studies.
