Ojas Vijayanand Potdar, Nitin Borle, Sanjay Nagral, Shraddha Bhone and Amrita Patkar
Inguinodynia is defined as groin pain at or beyond 3 months following inguinal hernia repair. There is limited literature on this problem from India. Studies have investigated role of different risk factors for inguinodynia like mesh, inguinal nerves identification during surgery, technique of repair etc. However, to our knowledge there is no study on the impact of occupation on inguinodynia.
Objective: This study attempts to study the role of occupation in incidence of inguinodynia following surgery.
Methods: A prospective study was conducted at a secondary care hospital in Mumbai. 152 adult patients with uncomplicated inguinal hernias who underwent repair by open or laparoscopic technique were enrolled over 2 years. Patients were preoperatively questioned regarding the nature of their occupation and presence of pain associated with inguinal hernia, then divided into five occupation classes depending upon amount of weight lifting involved in their occupation. Postoperatively, they were followed up for 6 months and assessed for inguinodynia by a structured questionnaire. Incidence of inguinodynia was then compared between the different occupation classes.
Results: The incidence of inguinodynia at the end of 3rd and 6th month follow-up was 12.10% (19/157 surgeries) and 10.19% (16/157 surgeries) respectively. Incidence of inguinodynia increased from 8.8% for a sedentary worker to 38.5% for an extremely heavyweight worker at 6 months follow-up. By Pearson’s Chi-Square test, the p-value was 0.003 which is statistically significant.
Conclusion: Thus, the incidence of inguinodynia increased as amount of weight lifting at work increased, suggesting a role of occupation in inguinodynia.