Paper should have put more emphasis on benefits of laparoscopic repair

EDITOR,—Kate Lawrence and colleagues report excellent early results of their trial comparing laparoscopic with open hernia repair and show that patients prefer laparoscopic repair.1 With only 125 subjects, they found significant benefits in terms of pain scores and quality of life assessments in the early postoperative period after laparoscopic repair. They rightly conclude, however, that the single important criterion for success in hernia repair is the recurrence rate and that a far larger sample will have to be followed …