Abstract:To compare and analyze the treatment effect of thoracoscopic surgery and traditional open surgery for repair of congenital diaphragmatic hernia in neonates. Methods The research subjects included 86 neonates with congenital diaphragmatic hernia treated in our hospital from June 2012 to May 2015, and the children treated with thoracoscopic repair of diaphragmatic hernia were noted as the observation group, and those treated with traditional open surgery were noted as the control group, with 43 cases in each group. The operation indexes such as operation time, intraoperative bleeding volume, incision length, postoperative mechanical ventilation time, postoperative antibiotic use time and hospital stay, as well as survival rate, recurrence rate and incidences of complications were observed in the two groups. Results The operation indexes such as operative time, intraoperative blood loss, incision length, postoperative mechanical ventilation time, postoperative antibiotic use time, hospital stay and postoperative eating time in the observation group were significantly better than those in the control group (p <0.05). The differences in pleural effusion and 24-h PCO2 after operation were not statistically significant compared with those in the control group (p > 0.05). The incidence of complications in the observation group was 4.65%, lower than that of 13.95% in the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). There was no significant difference in the recurrence rate or survival rate between the two groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions The effect of thoracoscopic repair of diaphragmatic hernia is more significant than that of traditional open surgery in neonates with congenital diaphragmatic hernia.