Although urinary incontinence surgery has potential benefits such as preventing de novo stress urinary incontinence in women undergoing pelvic organ prolapse (POP) surgery, it comes with the potential cost of overtreatment and complications. We compared future surgery rates in a population cohort of women undergoing vaginal pelvic organ prolapse surgery.
All women undergoing POP repair in California from 2005 to 2011 were identified from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development databases. Rates of repeat surgery in those with and without concomitant urethral sling procedures were compared. To control for confounding effects, multivariate mixed effects logistic regression models were constructed to compare each woman's individualized risk of undergoing either sling revision surgery or future incontinence surgery.
In the cohort, 38,456 underwent a sling procedure at the time of POP repair and 42,858 did not. The future surgery rate was higher for sling-related complications in the POP + sling cohort compared with future incontinence surgery in the POP alone cohort (3.5% versus 3.0% respectively, p < 0.001). The difference persisted in multivariate modeling, where most women (60%) are at a higher risk of requiring sling revision surgery compared with needing a future primary incontinence procedure (40%).
Women who undergo vaginal prolapse repair without an incontinence procedure are at a low risk of future incontinence surgery. Women without urinary incontinence who are considering vaginal POP surgery should be informed of the risks and benefits of including a sling procedure.
International urogynecology journal. 2020 Mar 03 [Epub ahead of print]
Kai Dallas, Lisa Rogo-Gupta, Raveen Syan, Ekene Enemchukwu, Christopher S Elliott
Department of Urology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA., Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA., Department of Urology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA. .