Objective To investigate the most suitable anaesthesia method for the tension-free herniorrhaphy.Methods A total of 422 unilateral inguinal hernia cases from 2002 to 2005 were collected and randomly divided into the local anaesthesia group and epidural anaesthesia group. Observation indices and some relative data, such as operative duration, date of ambulation, date of foodintake, length of hospital stay, operation-correlated complications, anaesthesia complications, usage rate of ancillary drug, satisfactory rate for anesthesia, cost of hospitalization, were included and recorded in the questionnaire, and all the patients who took the tension-free herniorrhaphy were asked to answer it as the follow-up research. Results It was found that the occurrence of postoperative anaesthetic complications, the cost of hospitalization, length of stay of local anaesthesia group were significantly less than those of epidural anaesthesia group, and the date of moving and the date of foodintake were also significantly earlier than those of the other group (P＜0.05). However, there was no significant difference of operative duration, postoperative recovery situation and the satisfactory rate between two groups (P＞0.05).Conclusion The local anaesthesia is suitable for most of the tension-free herniorrhaphy, and it may be used as the conventional anaesthetic method.