Comparison of Postoperative Pain After Hernial Sac Ligation Versus Non-ligation in Inguinal Hernioplasty

Amongst general surgical operations done in elective theaters, Hernioplasty is one of the most common. In the current era of new and developing maneuvers of inguinal hernia repairs, the conventional anterior, tension-free approach is considered a daycare method with minimal morbidities. However, mild to medium early postoperative pain is frequent with reported incidence of 21.6% in literature.

The reasons of postoperative pain after hernia repair are multifactorial. Delikoukos et al mentioned that ilioinguinal nerve entrapment or mesh fixation in the periosteum of the pubic tubercle are major etiological factors in the occurrence of postoperative pain. Later studies highlighted that these factors are major culprits in chronic neuralgias with inconsistent involvement in early postoperative pain after mesh repair.This necessitated the exploration of other offenders causing early postoperative pain. In this context, surgeons focused on the role of hernial sac ligation in mesh repairs of indirect inguinal hernias. The notion behind this operative technique is the generation of pain as a consequence of highly pain sensitive parietal peritoneum trauma during ligation and division of hernia sac, the fact which was highlighted by Schulman et al nearly two decades ago. Despite this imperative reason, there is a noteworthy gap on this aspect of early pain with studies still addressing the chronic pain after mesh repair of inguinal hernias. A research reports that frequency of early postoperative pain at day one was significantly higher in 'hernial sac high ligation group' as compared to 'hernial sac non-ligation group' (mean postoperative pain on VAS; 3.5±1.5, and 2.3±1.2 respectively, p<0.05), yet other studies report no significant difference in pain when evaluating different operative techniques.However further studies are needed to establish omission of hernia sac ligation as part of the standard procedure.

Early postoperative pain not only results in delayed recovery and return to normal activity but also adds to the financial constraints of patient and health system.Therefore, the aim of this study is to compare the early postoperative pain after hernia sac ligation as compared to non-ligation in order to establish a definitive role of these operative techniques in the development of early postoperative pain after mesh repair of inguinal hernia so the superior of the two techniques will be employed subsequently.

Inclusion criteria

• Patients ≥15 years of age, of either gender having Incomplete indirect inguinal hernia with or without direct concurrent hernia as mentioned in operational definition.

Exclusion criteria

• Complete inguinal hernias.
• Patients having obstructed and/or strangulated inguinal hernia.
• Recurrent inguinal hernias.
• patients with ipsilateral synchronous inguinoscrotal pathologies e.g. hydrocele, testicular malignancy