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Diana Marie Weber, MD
Washington, DC

Arch Surg. 2002;137:1165.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Having demonstrated the feasibility of laparoscopic ventral hernia repair, surgeons are performing this procedure before its efficacy has been established by randomized controlled trials. In this meta-analysis, the authors evaluated the existing literature to determine whether superior outcomes have been demonstrated for laparoscopic ventral hernia repair. They found only 8 studies that compared open ventral hernia repair with the laparoscopic approach. Of these, only half were prospective. The outcomes that the authors focused on, presumably because they were the end points that they were able to measure in most studies, were perioperative complications, operative time, and length of hospital stay. They concluded that complication rates were lower and length of stay was shorter in the laparoscopic group and that operative times were not significantly different between the 2 groups.

It is surprising that these studies did not adequately address the differences in postoperative pain or hernia . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Short-term Outcomes of Laparoscopic and Open Ventral Hernia Repair: A Meta-analysis
Philip P. Goodney, Christian M. Birkmeyer, and John D. Birkmeyer
Arch Surg. 2002;137(10):1161-1165.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT