Abstract
Laparoscopic repair of paraesophageal hiatal hernia has become the standard of care in many centers across the world including ours at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In our practice, we were strongly influenced by the open surgical principles established by Griff Pearson. However, few centers if any, have been able to come close to the outstanding outcomes he produced. Dr. Pearson’s low recurrence rate of 2% with up to ten years of follow-up and longer has not been duplicated. In our center, we now have long term follow-up of our laparoscopic results showing an operative recurrence rate of 3% to 4%, and another 10% have small medically manageable recurrences. Some recent studies have had alarming recurrence rates that may approach 50%. While many laparoscopic surgeons claim to be able to do these operations, it is important to continue to scrutinize our results and determine if we can continue to improve upon our outcomes.