Purpose: Although direct-vision internal urethrotomy can be performed for the management of short, bulbar urethral strictures, excision and end-to-end anastomosis remains the best procedure to guarantee a high success rate. We performed a retrospective evaluation of patients who underwent bulbar end-to-end anastomosis to assess the factors affecting surgical outcome.
Materials and methods: We reviewed 33 patients with an average age of 55 years who underwent bulbar end-to-end anastomosis. Stricture etiology was blunt perineal trauma (54.6%), iatrogenic (24.2%), idiopathic (12.1%), and infection (9.1%). A total of 21 patients (63.6%) underwent urethrotomy, dilation, or multiple treatments before referral to our center. Clinical outcome was considered a treatment failure when any postoperative instrumentation was needed.
Results: Mean operation time was 151 minutes (range, 100 to 215 minutes) and mean excised stricture length was 1.5 cm (range, 0.8 to 2.3 cm). At a mean follow-up of 42.6 months (range, 8 to 96 months), 29 patients (87.9%) were symptom-free and required no further procedure. Strictures recurred in 4 patients (12.1%) within 5 months after surgery. Of four recurrences, one patient was managed successfully by urethrotomy, whereas the remaining three did not respond to urethrotomy or dilation and required additional urethroplasty. The recurrence rate was significantly higher in the patients with nontraumatic causes (iatrogenic in three, infection in one patient) than in the patients with traumatic etiology.
Conclusions: Excision and end-to-end anastomosis for short, bulbar urethral stricture has an acceptable success rate of 87.9%. However, careful consideration is needed to decide on the surgical procedure if the stricture etiology is nontraumatic.
Keywords: Surgical anastomosis; Treatment outcome; Urethral stricture.