A nationwide cohort study of hospital contacts after surgical treatment for urinary incontinence

AIMS: The aim was to assess complications of urinary incontinence (UI) for women who had a hospital contact within 30 days and to evaluate the conventional method of classifying complications vs grading complications into the Clavien-Dindo classification (CDC) system.

METHODS: A historical cohort study based on a nationwide population of women who had hospital contact within 30 days of surgical treatment for UI during a 5-year period.

RESULTS: There were 874 (16.2%) hospital contacts to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, among 5393 procedures. For retropubic midurethral sling (RPMUS) and transobturator midurethral sling (TOMUS), the most common reasons for hospital contacts were voiding dysfunction, self-reported pain within 14 days and acute cystitis and for urethral injection therapy (UIT) persisting UI, acute cystitis, and voiding dysfunction. Voiding dysfunction requiring surgery, use of catheter or both, occurred more frequently in women who had RPMUS as compared with TOMUS (30.5% vs 21.7%; P = .01). Women, who received RPMUS and TOMUS, had surgical complications classified as up to CD IIIb, whereas women who had UIT were classified as up to CD II.

CONCLUSIONS: Sixteen percent of the women had a hospital contact within 30 days. A more obstructive character of RPMUS than for TOMUS was indicated, as more women with voiding dysfunction required surgery or catheter following RPMUS. The CDC system in its current form does not improve the overall characterization of complications in terms of type and severity following synthetic midurethral sling and UIT treatment.