ACHQC – Abdominal Core Health Quality Collaborative

[Good intentions]

Here is an interesting new paper about the effect of smoking on short-term outcomes after inguinal hernia surgery. They use ACHQC data for the study. Almost 20,000 subjects. There must be some correlations with mesh type and/or surgery method.

A focus on smoking is a start. Hopefully somebody will be brave enough some day to call out the bad mesh products. I wonder if the lawyers have thought about discovery as a way to get access to the data. Or maybe the mesh makers also, to show how their product is better than the competition’s. Assuming that mesh information is part of the information acquired. It’s easy to imagine though that all of the meshes are lumped together in to one category – mesh.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00464-023-10055-4

Published: 12 April 2023
The effect of smoking status on inguinal hernia repair outcomes: An ACHQC analysis
Celeste G. Yergin, Delaney D. Ding, Sharon Phillips, Thomas E. Read & Mazen R. Al-Mansour
Surgical Endoscopy (2023)

“Background
Smoking has been shown to negatively affect surgical outcomes, so smoking cessation prior to elective operations is often recommended. …

Results
19,866 inguinal hernia repairs were included (current smokers?=?2239, former smokers?=?4064 and never smokers?=?13,563). …

Conclusions
Smoking status is not associated with short-term adverse outcomes following inguinal hernia repair. Mandating smoking cessation does not appear necessary to prevent short-term adverse outcomes.”