Hernias: Surgical Mesh Implants

(asked on 30th April 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of the recommendation made by Hernia Outcomes Campaign on the introduction of a watchful waiting policy for inguinal hernia surgery in that organisations report, Inguinal Hernia Surgery: Improving Patient Outcomes and Reducing Variation, published in November 2017.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 9th May 2018

NHS England has advised that the Patient Reported Outcome Measure (PROM) on hernia repair did not demonstrate significant improvements in quality of outcomes for many patients and was not implemented very widely.

The Hernia Outcomes Campaign team are in discussion with the Royal College of Surgeons of England, with the British Hernia Society, the Getting It Right First Time team and NHS England about potentially constructing and testing a more useful PROM for hernia outcomes.

NHS England has advised that no specific guidance is issued to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) regarding the development of commissioning policies for inguinal hernia repair.

It is up to CCGs to decide how services are delivered at a local level and to decide the criteria that they use to determine their commissioning policies for hernia repair. In doing so, they are expected to take account of any National Institute for Health and Care Excellence Quality Standards that are relevant to this.

Individual surgeons have a responsibility for assessing the outcomes of their operations and should make this information available in summary form to prospective patients to help them make effective decisions about whether or not to choose surgical treatment.

A representative of NHS England has met with members of the Hernias Outcomes Campaign and discussed the contents of their 2017 report. NHS England concur that for patients with few symptoms an effective process of shared decision-making between patient and surgeon may well result in a choice not to opt for immediate surgery.

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