How to deal with the variability of peripheral nerve lesion patterns after inguinal herniotomy? A descriptive approach for a new terminology in clinical practice

This study has shown that it is hardly possible to assign a specific lesional inguinal dermatome to a specific nerve, as nerves show a large individual variability in their anatomical, topographical location and thus in their dermatome boundaries. Therefore, we propose a descriptive approach to the terminology of peripheral inguinal nerve lesions using common regional landmarks. This will avoid a potentially erroneous dermatome assignment to a certain nerve and facilitate the reproducibility of lesion descriptions between different observers, thus facilitating communication in clinical practice.