[The vaginal risk in hypogastric surgery of the pelvic ureter and the trigone of the bladder (author's transl)].

Excision of the vagina during an operation involving the pelvic ureter or the lower part of the bladder may result in the development of a urinary fistula into the vagina. This risk would seem to be little known, though perfectly explicable on the basis of the close proximity of the structures involved. Certain procedures on the lower urinary tract, including both the pelvic ureter as well as the trigone of the bladder, which may be combined with unfavourable gynaecological circumstances, natural or acquired, may explain such damage to the bladder, with fistula formation. The treatment of these fistulae will be curative, 0ut attention must also be paid to prevention, i.e., cautions and accurate surgical technique adapted to the difficulties encounterd in this region.