Impact of NICE guidance on laparoscopic surgery for inguinal hernias: analysis of interrupted time series

Abstract

We found 217 000 cases with a primary procedure code for primary surgery for an inguinal hernia from the hospital episode statistics database for England from April 1998 to December 2001. Of these, secondary procedure codes for minimal access surgery identified 8960 (4.1%) cases in which surgery was laparoscopic.