Is continent urinary diversion feasible in children under five years of age?

Purpose: To review our clinical experience with urinary continent catheterizable reservoir in children under five years of age. Materials and Methods: A total of 23 patients (16 males, 7 females) with a median age of 3.64 years were evaluated. Among these, 6 (26.08 percent) had a posterior urethral valve, 9 (39.13 percent) myelomeningocele, 4 (17.39 percent) bladder exstrophy, 2 (8.69 percent) genitourinary rabdomyosarcoma, 1 (4.34 percent) had spinal tumor and 1 (4.34 percent) an ano-rectal anomaly. Results: Perioperative complications were observed in four patients consisting of one febrile urinary tract infection, one partial operative wound dehiscence, one partial stomal dehiscence and one vesico-cutaneous fistula after a secondary exstrophy repair. The overall long-term complications rate was 40.90 percent and consisted of two stomal stenoses (9.09 percent), one neobladder mucosal extrusion (4.54 percent), three neobladder calculi (13.63 percent) and persistence of urinary incontinence in three patients (13.63 percent). The overall surgical revision was 36.36 percent and final continence rate was 95.45 percent with mean follow-up of 39.95 months Conclusion: Continent urinary diversion is technically feasible even in small children, with acceptable rates of complications.

Elective appendicovesicostomy in association with monfort abdominoplasty in the treatment of prune belly syndrome

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the role of elective appendicovesicostomy in association with Monfort abdominoplasty to avoid urinary tract infection (UTI) and renal damage in the post-operative follow-up of patients with prune belly syndrome. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We followed 4 patients operated in our institution (UNIFESP) (Monfort, orchidopexy and Mitrofanoff) and compared them to 2 patients treated similarly, but without an appendicovesicostomy, in a second institution (UFBA). We evaluated postoperative clinical complications, UTI and preservation of renal parenchyma. Patients were followed as outpatients with urinalysis, ultrasonography (US) and occasionally with renal scintigraphy. RESULTS: Mean follow-up was 23.5 months. Immediate post-operative course was uneventful. We observed that only one patient with the Mitrofanoff channel persisted with UTI, while the 2 patients used as controls persisted with recurrent pyelonephritis (> 2 UTI year). CONCLUSION: Our data suggest that no morbidity was added by the appendicovesicostomy to immediate postoperative surgical recovery and that this procedure may have a beneficial effect in reducing postoperative UTI events and their consequences by reducing the postvoid residuals in the early abdominoplasty follow-up. However, we recognize that the series is small and only a longer follow-up with a larger number of patients will allow us to confirm our suppositions. We could not make any statistically significant assumptions regarding differences in renal preservation due to the same limitations.