The correlation between preputial blood flow and microvessel density in distal hypospadias: a prospective clinical study.

OBJECTIVE

A prospective clinical study was designed to investigate the correlation between preputial blood flow (BF) and microvessel density (MVD).

PATIENTS AND

METHODS

A total of 44 children were included in the study. The hypospadias group consisted of 16 children undergoing distal hypospadias repair, and the control group consisted of 28 age-matched healthy children undergoing circumcision. BFs were measured using a laser Doppler flowmeter on the most distal part of the dorsal prepuces, and then the tissue samples were harvested from the same location. They were immunostained with an antibody against CD31 in order to assay MVD. The statistical analyses were carried out using Student's t test and Pearson's correlation analysis.

RESULTS

The preputial MVD was found to be significantly decreased in the patients with hypospadias compared with the healthy children (33.95 ± 9.79 vs. 48.25 ± 10.08; p < 0.05), whereas there was no difference in terms of the BF (40.58 ± 16.16 vs. 33.09 ± 19.65; p > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

We found no correlation between the preputial MVD and BF in the present study. This result suggests that reduced preputial MVD does not have any influence on BF in distal hypospadias.