Management of catheter-associated urethral strictures

Background: Urethral stricture is an abnormal narrowing or loss of distensibility of any segment of the urethra surrounded by corpus spongiosum. In the last two decades, there has been a change in the pattern of aetiology of urethral stricture in urban centres in Nigeria with a shift away from post-infective strictures to the emergence of traumatic and iatrogenic causes.Objective: This study aims to present our observation of the occurrence of long-segment urethral strictures in patients after urethral catheter placement for various indications.Methodology: This is a descriptive, cross sectional report of patients who presented to and were managed at the Urology Unit of a tertiary hospital in North-Western Nigeria. Relevant information were retrieved from patients' case notes and the data was entered into a proforma and analysed using the SPSS 20 software.Results: The mean age of the patients was 45.4 ± 19.4 years, with a range of 11-80 years. Indications for urethral catheterization were acute urine retention 11 (43.8%), intra-operative urine output monitoring 9 (28.1%), following road traffic accident 10(31.2%), unconsciousness secondary to meningitis 1 (3.1%) and after urologic surgery 1 (3.1%). Urethral catheterization was carried out in peripheral hospitals in 19 (56.3%) patients; and from the hospitals operating room in 10 (31.2%), accident and emergency room 2 (6.3%) and trauma centre 1 (3.1%). Strictures were panurethral in 22 (68.75%), in the bulbar urethra in 6 (18.75%) and in the penile urethra 4 (12.5%). The length of strictures ranged from 1 cm to 20 cm. Treatments offered included substitution urethroplasty using oral mucosa grafts (OMG) urethroplasty 30 (93.8%), fasciocutaneous penile flap 1 (3.1%) and direct visual internal urethrotomy (DVIU)1 (3.1%). Satisfactory voiding was recorded in 28 (87.5%), voiding was unsatisfactory in 2 (6.3%), while one patient had stricture recurrence and another one is awaiting second stage repair.Conclusion: Urethral catheterization is an emerging cause of panurethral strictures in our practice and may occur even after relief of acute urine retention but more worrisome following short-term catheterization during surgery. There is need for evaluation of the quality of silicone-coated latex urethral catheters currently available

Ultrasound guided versus conventional radial artery cannulation

This research was designed to study the values of ultrasound guidance in radial artery cannulation in comparison to conventional technique. Two groups of patients each is twenty cases for whom radial artery cannulation was indicated, first group [A] the artery were cannulated using the ultrasound guidance, and the second group [B] the radial artery.was cannulated by the conventional technique.B.oth groups were studied regarding duration of cannulation success rate, incidence of complications. The ultrasound guided radial artery cannulation technique showed more short duration, high success rate lower incidence of complications in comparison to the conventional technique of cannulation. It was concluded that the ultrasound guided technique is highly valuable in cannulation of radial artery