Urethral stricture disease is prevalent, and many surgical techniques have been developed to treat it. Currently, urethroplasty for bulbar strictures implies ventral or dorsal stricturotomy and a buccal mucosa graft (BMG) patch.
To describe the surgical approach of the ventral patch BMG urethroplasty for proximal bulbar urethral stricture and to analyze 11 consecutive cases for whom the technique was used.
The diagnosis of urethral stricture was confirmed with a combined retrograde urethrography and micturating cystourethrography. A single team exposed the urethra, harvested, and planted the BMG in the lithotomy position under general anesthesia. The oral preoperative preparation was done with oraldene (hexetidine) mouth wash three times daily beginning from the 2 nd preoperative day. The buccal mucosa was harvested from the left inner cheek in all the patients. The donor site was left unclosed but packed with wet gauze. Data related to age, preoperative adverse conditions, stricture length, urine culture result, perineal/oral wound complications, postoperative residual urine volume, and duration of hospital stay were recorded.
Eleven patients with proximal bulbar urethral stricture had BMG urethroplasty from August 2013 to October 2015. Stricture length ranged from 2 to 5 cm. In six (54%) of the men, the stricture resulted from urethritis thereby constituting the most common etiology of urethral stricture in this study. The preoperative adverse conditions were age above 70 in three, diabetes mellitus in two, severe dental caries in one, and recurrent stricture in two. All of them were able to resume reasonable oral intake 72 h postoperatively. One (9.2%) had perineal wound infection, while two (18.2%) still had mild pain at donor site 4 weeks postoperatively. Ten (90.9%) of the 11 patients had <30 ml residual urine volume at 2 months of follow-up.