Re: 10.1007/s00464-011-1866-z: Laparoscopic slit mesh repair of parastomal hernia using a designated mesh: long-term results (Surg Endosc. (2012) 26:267–270)

Dear Sir, We read Dr. Hansson’s letter with great interest and would like to thank Dr. Hansson for his very important comment. We sincerely apologize for the error that we made while interpreting the results of his studies [1, 2], which was an honest mistake due to misdating the results of two different studies with the report published by Hansson et al. in 2003 [3]. We also would like to express our regret to the readers of Surgical Endoscopy for the misleading paragraph in our Discussion. Dr. Hannson’s paper is not in the least misleading or confusing; it was we who were confused and for this we are duly embarrassed. Nevertheless, our study presents similar results to Dr. Hansson’s long-term results from 2009, which mainly show high recurrence rates after laparoscopic parastomal hernia repair (recurrence rate of 37 and 46.4 % respectively) [2, 4]. We believe that although keyhole repair is technically feasible, long-term results show high recurrence rates and technical improvement is necessary.