Recurrence rates following local anaesthetic day case inguinal hernia repair by junior surgeons in a district general hospital.

Four hundred and seventy one inguinal hernia repairs were performed by surgeons in training as day cases using local anaesthesia between September 1979 and December 1982. All patients were sent questionnaires relating to the possibility of a recurrence or an unsatisfactory outcome of the operation at a mean of 34 months after surgery. A 96.8% retrieval rate was achieved. As a result of answers received 62 patients were examined. Nineteen recurrences (4.2%) were diagnosed by an independent assessor; a rate of 2.2% for indirect and 8.2% for direct inguinal herniae. No UK series approaches this operation frequency and none has junior surgeons as the sole operators. The recurrence rate is comparable with many in-patient and short stay series. As a result of this day unit, local waiting times for hernia repairs have dropped from 2 years to 6 weeks.