Hernia surgery offers value for money, finds study

Hernia surgery may offer good value for money and improved quality of life for patients, according to a new analysis. The government wants the NHS to make £20 billion worth of efficiency savings by 2015 and it has been suggested that money could be saved by performing fewer hernia operations. In a briefing by the Audit Commission in 2011, inguinal hernia repair surgery was included on a list of "low clinical value" treatments. But the new study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine , suggests that hernia surgery could be effective and also cost-effective based on patients' own assessments of their health-related quality of life and the costs hospitals report they incur. The research also suggests keyhole surgery may offer more health benefit and value for money than open surgery for hernia operations. An inguinal hernia - the most common type - occurs when the bowel or fatty tissue in the abdomen pokes through the surrounding muscle wall into the groin. It can appear as a swelling in the groin and can be painful, but surgery is not normally required immediately.