Abdominal versus vaginal approach for the management of genital prolapse and coexisting stress incontinence.

Patients who undergo surgery because of genital prolapse and coexisting stress incontinence can be treated by a combination of surgical procedures via a unified route. We performed a retrospective study among 47 patients to compare micturition, defecation and prolapse symptoms after surgery, as well as duration of hospital stay and complication rate between patients who underwent a unified vaginal or abdominal surgical correction. All patients were treated between January 1995 and December 1997 in the University Medical Center Utrecht or St Antonius Hospital Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. Abdominal surgery was associated with a higher prevalence of difficulty in bladder emptying (relative risk (RR) 2.3 (95% CI 1.4-8.4)), fecal incontinence (RR 3.4, CI 1.1-10.7) and soiling (OR 2.8, CI 1.2-6.2), as well as with a longer postoperative hospital stay (8.6 vs 7.3 days) and a higher complication rate (25.0% vs. 11.4%) than vaginal surgery. These results suggest that a unified vaginal surgical correction of genital prolapse and coexisting stress incontinence appears to be preferable to a unified abdominal surgical correction.