Laparoscopic hernia therapy (TAPP) as a teaching operation

Introduction: Because of an increasing number of endoscopic hernia procedur es, it is important to look into the possibility of standardizing these tec hniques helping surgeons to acquire the operative skills necessary. Materia l and Methods: To discuss these aspects, the documented data on TAPP operat ions that have been carried out in this department since 1993 were analyzed . The results of teaching procedures were compared with those of experts af ter they had gotten past the learning and development curve. Results: A tot al of 778 teaching procedures were performed by 10 surgeons with an individ ual experience of 30.5 operations (median). Before starting the first proce dure, 89 were done by assistants operating the camera. The morbidity of tea ching operations was 1.9% compared to 1.4% for those performed by experts. After a median follow-up of 23 months there were two recurrences (0.23%) in the expert group and none in the teaching group (follow-up 16 months). Con clusion: Because of the potentials of standardization of the TAPP technique , the results of teaching were equal to expert operations. Therefore, TAPP is suitable for application in a routine setting.