Introduction: Because of an increasing number of endoscopic hernia procedures, it is important to look into the possibility of standardizing these techniques helping surgeons to acquire the operative skills necessary.
Material and methods: To discuss these aspects, the documented data on TAPP operations that have been carried out in this department since 1993 were analyzed. The results of teaching procedures were compared with those of experts after they had gotten past the learning and development curve.
Results: A total of 778 teaching procedures were performed by 10 surgeons with an individual experience of 30.5 operations (median). Before starting the first procedure, 89 were done by assistants operating the camera. The morbidity of teaching operations was 1.9% compared to 1.4% for those performed by experts. After a median follow-up of 23 months there were two recurrences (0.23%) in the expert group and none in the teaching group (follow-up 16 months).
Conclusion: Because of the potentials of standardization of the TAPP technique, the results of teaching were equal to expert operations. Therefore, TAPP is suitable for application in a routine setting.