Purpose: The aim of this study was to establish the rate at which routine postoperative renal ultrasonography is able to detect urinary tract injury following gynecological surgery.
Methods: A retrospective analysis was carried out for the study period 2015-2019 of all patients who had undergone subtotal or total hysterectomy, or radical hysterectomy or salpingectomy, salpingo-oophorectomy, or oophorectomy, and subsequently had a urinary tract injury.
Results: In a total of 2068 patients, 25 urinary tract injuries occurred (1.21%), including 21 urinary bladder lesions (1.02%) and four ureteral injuries (0.19%). The incidence of urinary tract injuries was 3% in oncologic procedures and 0.86% in procedures for benign disease. Nineteen injuries (76%) were diagnosed intraoperatively, and six injuries (24%) were clinically diagnosed after surgery. All of the patients had uneventful postoperative renal ultrasound examinations.
Conclusion: Routine postoperative renal ultrasonography was not capable of diagnosing urinary tract injuries after gynecologic surgery. Routine postoperative renal ultrasound examinations should, therefore, not be performed after gynecologic operations.
Keywords: Gynecologic surgery; Renal ultrasound; Urinary tract injury.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.