Ketamine is a safe and effective drug for pediatric anesthesia, sedation and analgesia. We hoped to identify that surgeons could operate a pediatric hernia with the ketamine anesthesia without general anesthesia. The study was a consecutive case series of 2230 inguinal hernia patients aged 1 months to 17 years in a Joo's day-surgical clinic during 11-year period. The patients had pediatric inguinal hernia surgery without general anesthesia under the day-surgery system. We retrospectively analyzed the medical record of patients who were registered with the Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) system. All patients received ketamine (5mg/kg) and atropine (0.01mg/kg) intramuscularly before surgery. After anesthesia, we injected 1~2% lidocaine (Less than 5ml) subcutaneously at the site of incision and started operation. The surgical method was the high ligation method of the hernia sac.) In total 2230 patients, male were 1756 and female were 474. 2076 patients were a unilateral inguinal hernia at the time of surgery and 154 were bilateral hernia patients. Less than three months, depending on the age of the patients was 391, and less than 12 months the patient was 592 people (26.5%). After surgery, there were no accidents or long term complications associated with ketamine anesthesia. We think the surgeon can safely do the pediatric inguinal hernia surgery using ketamine and lidocaine without anesthesiologist through 11 years of our surgical experiences.
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Table 1
The Distribution of Inguinal Hernia Patients by Age
Table 2
The Distribution of Younger Patients than 12 Months
