Complications following surgical intervention for stress urinary incontinence: a national perspective.
OBJECTIVE
Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) impacts many women. Treatment is primarily surgical. Post-operative morbidity considerably affects individuals and the health care system. Our objective is to describe complications following surgery for SUI and how they affect resource utilization.


METHODS
Utilizing the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (a nationally representative dataset), 147,473 patients who underwent surgery for SUI from 1988 to 2000 were identified by ICD-9 codes. Comorbid conditions/complications were extracted using ICD-9 codes, including complication rates, length of stay (LOS), hospital charges, and discharge status.


RESULTS
Overall complication rate was 13.0% (not equal to sum of complication sub-types, as each woman may have had = 1 complication), with 2.8% bleeding, 1.4% surgical injury, 4.3% urinary/renal, 4.4% infectious, 0.1% wound, 1.1% pulmonary insufficiency, 0.5% myocardial infarction, 0.2% thromboembolic. The "gold standard" surgical technique for SUI, the pubovaginal sling, had the lowest morbidity at 12.5%. Mean LOS increased with morbidity: from 2.9 to 4.1 to 6.1 days for those with 0, 1, and =2 complications respectively (P < 0.001). Similarly, inflation-adjusted hospital charges increased with morbidity: from 7,918 dollars to 9,828 dollars to 15,181 dollars for those with 0, 1, and =2 complications respectively (P < 0.001). The percentage of patients requiring post-discharge subacute or home care increased with morbidity: from 4.4% to 8.4% to 14.3% for those with 0, 1, and =2 complications (P < 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
A substantial percentage of women experience complications following surgery for SUI. Post-operative morbidity leads to dramatically increased resource utilization. Prospective studies are needed to identify pre-operative risk factors and intraoperative process measures to optimize the quality of care.
Taub
David A
DA
The Department of Urology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0330, USA.
Hollenbeck
Brent K
BK
Wei
John T
JT
Dunn
Rodney L
RL
McGuire
Edward J
EJ
Latini
Jerilyn M
JM
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D017052:Hospital Mortality; D006801:Humans; D007902:Length of Stay; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011183:Postoperative Complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D014550:Urinary Incontinence, Stress / Q000601:surgery*; D013520:Urologic Surgical Procedures