Does surgical approach affect the incidence of inflatable penile prosthesis infection?
OBJECTIVE
To review retrospectively the rate of infection in 380 consecutive organically impotent men implanted with a Mentor Alpha I inflatable penile prosthesis, stratified by surgical approach (scrotal or infrapubic).


METHODS
Data were obtained from review of medical records. One hundred percent of cases were available for a minimum postoperative follow-up of 6 months.


RESULTS
Twenty patients had a prior penile prosthetic operation and were excluded, leaving 360 primary implants for review. Overall, 6 patients (1.7%) developed periprosthetic infection. Four of these 6 patients were diabetic. Four of 139 infrapubic cases (2.9%) and 2 of 221 scrotal cases (0.9%) developed periprosthetic infection. This difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.15). Equal proportions of the infrapubic (39.6%) and scrotal cases (40.3%) were diabetic patients. The infection rate in patients with and without diabetes was 4 of 144 (2.8%) and 2 of 216 (0.9%), respectively. This difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.18).


CONCLUSIONS
This study indicates that there is no statistically significant difference in the infection rate when the scrotal and infrapubic approaches to inflatable penile prosthesis insertion are compared.
Division of Urology, Allegheny University Hospitals-Graduate, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
B B
BB
Garber
S M
SM
Marcus
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019935:Penile Implantation / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods*; D015917:Penile Prosthesis; D016459:Prosthesis-Related Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D012189:Retrospective Studies