Laparoscopic hernia surgery in Sweden 2010 to 2020—scientifically highlights from the national Swedish Hernia Register

The Swedish Hernia Register (SHR) is a national quality register with more than 350,000 prospectively registered groin hernia repairs. Studies from the SHR have addressed important and clinically relevant issues within the field of laparoscopic groin hernia surgery and the aim of this paper is to present five of the most innovative patient-oriented publications including analysis of laparoscopic hernia repairs based on data retrieved from the SHR published between 2010 and 2020. After a Medline search was conducted, papers were graded and five papers were selected because of their specific nature, quality of methodology or international interest. The papers in our review studied a wide range of topics such as the risk of male infertility after mesh repair, risk of groin hernia surgery after open and minimally invasive prostatectomy, chronic pain after groin hernia surgery vs. method of repair, gender differences in risk of reoperation vs. method of repair and risk of reoperation vs. low and high molecular weight of the mesh. When gathering large amount of high-quality data, including almost total national coverage of all inguinal surgeries performed, it is possible to make valid conclusions and recommendation even on rare conditions and to sort out techniques that does not perform as intended, or does not apply to specific clinical situations. The studies above show that a laparoscopic repair is associated with a decreased risk of chronic pain for both gender to the price of a significantly higher risk of reoperation in men. The contrary is shown in women with a decreased risk of reoperation using laparoscopic repair compared to open repair.