[One-stage surgical correction of complex urethral stenoses with a pedicled skin graft].

The author reports his experience and the results of a series of 104 patients suffering from urethral strictures, operated by the same operator from September 1984 to March 1990 and treated by the same surgical method: one stage urethroplasty using a pedicled skin graft. The principles which guided his technique are: complete exposure of the pathological tissue, appropriate size and cut of the graft from a healthy skin zone, careful dissection of the pedicle, elliptical anastomosis at each end and sparing of the corpora cavernosa. Eighty percent of the urethral strictures encountered in the series were complex and situated in various locations: 19 were penile, 55 were bulbar perineal, 30 were bulbar membranous. The urethral strictures were fistulated for 31 cases, multi-operated in 32 case, half of the cases had upstream repercussions from the stenosed zone, and 17 cases had an accompanying pathology. Ninety-one percent of the patients benefited from a patch graft designed to widen the stenosed zone, while a tubular graft was performed for 13 patients to reconstitute a neo-urethra. For a large number of the cases studied, postoperative follow-up was done for two years and for some cases exceeded two years. The operative results were quickly obtained. Good results observed after 3 months generally did not deteriorate thereafter, whereas bad results observed immediately after operation are not definitive since they can be reoperated by the same technique. For 82.7% of the patients, definitive cure was obtained, while 96% of the total number of patients showed considerable improvement. The intermediate results, average (13.6%) and the bad results (3.6%) both show the same inducing factors: past history of localized dilatory manipulations, infected areas but mostly defective application of management techniques. The superiority of this type of surgical technique and its reliability are stressed in the discussion. Also analysed are the following: the difficulty encountered in the management of stenoses of penile sites, the images which appear on the urethrographic controls and the cases where the choice of the tubular graft is appropriate, the problem of draining and the appropriate type and method of draining. Six years of experience in the utilisation of our technique, one-stage urethroplasty using a pedicled skin graft, leads the author to consider the technique as reliable and useful for the management of urethral strictures, especially for difficult multi-operated, infected, fistulated strictures. For these cases, our technique constitutes the best indication.