AIM: The increase in the number of publications in the hernia field has been higher than the most of our areas of surgery. COVID-19 pandemics has affected many elective surgical procedures like hernia repairs. We assumed that the declines in case volumes might cause some falls in related publications, and searched the literature in order to find the number of herniology publications before and during the pandemic. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A systematic PUBMED search was done for three consecutive decades “1991-2000”, “2001-2010” and “2011-2020” by using the key words “inguinal and hernia”, “umbilical and hernia”, “incisional and hernia”, “mesh and hernia”, “laparoscopic and hernia”, “robotic and hernia”, and “experimental and hernia”. Later, a comparison of years 2019 and 202o was done. RESULTS: Although increases were detected for all searches with the key words, the largest rise was seen in publications related to “robotic and hernia”. Some undulations were recorded during the years, but the number of publications showed obvious increases decade by decade. A very small decrease was found in the number of publications for “experimental and hernia” only, however all other searches presented increases during the first year of the pandemic, 2020 in comparison with 2019. CONCLUSIONS: The increases in the number of publications in hernia field continued during the last decade. COVID-19 pandemic did not cause a decrease in these publications the first year. We assume that year 2021 can be a more correct criteria in order to observe the potentially negative effect of the pandemic.
P157 EFFECTS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS IN HERNIA FIELD