It might be of interest to Simon Cole, one of the two surgeons being made redundant at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford (Oxford Mail, June 27), that the reduced capacity for, among other operations, hernia repairs might well have something to do with the following.

Earlier this year, my husband was approached by our surgery to inquire whether his hernia was causing him any pain.

Upon saying that it did not (although he would like to be rid of this), he was told: "Then you will be taken off the list."

If this has been duplicated by surgeries around the region, it does not take a mathemetician to realise that, to quote Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust spokesman Helen Peggs, "capacity is being matched to the reduced use of this service".

Perhaps her fervent hope is that hernias will reduce in size accordingly to match the criteria.

SHEILA SPENCER, Beauchamp Lane, Cowley, Oxford