Perioperative Telemedicine Care in Hernia Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Telemedicine has been increasingly incorporated into medical practice in the last few years. However, it is still not a routine practice in our field. There is limited data on the impact of telemedicine on outcomes in hernia surgery. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to evaluate the outcomes between telemedical perioperative care and in-person traditional care in hernia surgery. PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane were searched for studies comparing Telemedical interventions and traditional In-Person perioperative care for hernia surgery. Postoperative outcomes were assessed by pooled analysis and meta-analysis. Statistical analysis was performed using Review Manager 5.4 (Nordic Cochrane Center, The Cochrane Collaboration, Copenhagen, Denmark). One thousand and thirty-four articles were screened, and 39 were thoroughly reviewed. We included three observational retrospective studies, with 2,582 patients receiving telemedicine or in-person care for hernia surgery repair. A total of 2,049 (79%) patients received telemedicine care, and 533 (21%) received traditional care. There was no significant differences in overall complications (14% vs. 13%; odds ratio (OR) 1.11; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.83-1.48;