Metachronous contralateral pediatric inguinal hernia

RM Nataraja, AA MahomedDepartment of Pediatric Surgery and Urology, Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, Brighton, UKDate of preparation: April 20, 2010. Conflict of interest: None declaredClinical question: Should routine contralateral inguinal region exploration be done to prevent a metachronous contralateral pediatric inguinal hernia?Results: The incidence of a metachronous contralateral pediatric inguinal hernia is 6.4% in both genders. Sixteen contralateral groin explorations need to be done to prevent one metachronous contralateral pediatric inguinal hernia.Implementation:• Routine exploration of the asymptomatic contralateral groin is not recommended.• Infants less than one month old with an inguinal hernia should receive immediate specialist referral.• Older infants and children with a reducible hernia should be referred to the pediatric surgical outpatient department.• Pediatric patients with an original left-sided hernia or who were less than six months old at the time of the first hernia repair should receive regular follow-up in the primary health care setting.Keywords: metachronous contralateral pediatric inguinal hernia, exploratio