Use of the prolene hernia system for inguinal hernia repair: retrospective, comparative time analysis versus other inguinal hernia repair systems.

No data are available for the duration of surgery for the various procedures currently used in hernia repair. This retrospective study was undertaken to determine the time required for the surgical repair of unilateral primary inguinal hernias using currently available procedures and to show specifically that the duration of surgery using the PROLENE Hernia System (PHS) was equal to or less than the duration of surgery using a plug-and-patch device. Data were collected from 1032 sequential hernia procedures performed by 16 surgeons at a community hospital between 1997 and 1999. To gain more accurate information to compare the PHS and plug-and-patch procedures data from four surgeons who had performed at least five of each procedure were used as the primary analysis database. The two most frequently used devices were the PHS (35.9%) and plug and patch (41.0%). The average times of surgery for these procedures were not significantly different (25.4 vs 27.2 minutes, respectively; P = 0.236). A significant variability was observed between surgeons in the duration of surgery and there was evidence for an inverse relationship between the duration of surgery and the number of procedures a surgeon had performed. Both procedures take approximately the same time to perform.