Femoral hernia in the female.

A study of 384 consecutive femoral herniorrhaphies performed upon female patients admitted to Shouldice Hospital, Toronto, during a 19-year period was carried out. Its main purpose was to describe the techniques used and to evaluate the results obtained. A careful 10-year follow-up plan for all cases existed.Two hundred and ninety-three operations were performed for the repair of simple femoral hernia; 91 were performed for the repair of femoral hernia which had developed following an initial ipsilateral inguinal or femoral repair performed previously, either in this hospital or elsewhere.The basic repair was subinguinal. Four modifications are described, one entirely subinguinal and three combined with exploration of the inguinal canal.The recurrence rate for simple femoral hernia in the female was 1.3% and for "recurrent" femoral hernia in the female, 5.5%.