Presentation delay, misdiagnosis, inter-hospital transfer times and surgical outcomes in testicular torsion: analysis of statewide case series from central Brazil.

PURPOSE: To estimate statewide presentation delay, misdiagnosis rate, inter-hospital transfer times and testicular salvage for testicular torsion patients treated in our state's public health system.

PATIENTS AND

METHODS

Case series of consecutive testicular torsion patients treated in our state's public health system between 2012-2018. Predictors included presentation delay (time from symptoms to first medical assessment), facilitie's level-of-care (primary, secondary, tertiary), first diagnosis (torsion, epididymitis, other), Doppler-enhanced ultrasound request (Doppler-US) and inter-hospital transfer times, with surgical organ salvage as the main response. We used Bayesian regression to estimate the effect of first examining facilitie's level-of-care, first diagnosis, and Doppler-US on transfer time.

RESULTS

505 patients were included, most (298, 59%) with presentation delay >6 hours. Misdiagnosis at first examining facility raised transfer time from median 2.8 to 23.4 (epididymitis) and 37.9 hours (other) and lowered testicular salvage rates from 60.3% (torsion) to 10.7% (epididymitis) and 18.3% (other). Doppler-US had negligible effects on transfer time once controlling for misdiagnosis in the regression model. Although organ salvage in patients presenting before 6 hours at the tertiary facility was high (94.6%, and about 20% lower for those presenting at lower levels-of-care), the overall salvage rate was more modest (46%).

CONCLUSION

Our low overall testicular salvage rates originated from a large proportion of late presentations combined with long transfer times caused by frequent misdiagnoses. Our results indicate that efforts to improve salvage rates should aim at enhancing population-wide disease awareness and continuously updating physicians working at primary and secondary levels-of-care about scrotal emergencies.