The complication rate after hypospadias repair correlated to preoperative symptoms

Aim: To assess the rate of complications following hypospadias repair in a consecutive series of boys and the correlations of those complications with their preoperative symptoms, degree of hy- pospadias and method of operation. This study was conducted to address the question of whether all boys with all degrees of hypospadias should undergo reconstruction. Methods: This was a prospective cohort study. We included every boy who underwent an operation for the primary repair of hypospadias between January 2011 and April 2014. The median follow-up time was 24 months. The study ended in October 2014. The main outcome measurements were the frequency of postoperative complications and their correlations with the degree of hypospadias, the preo- perative symptoms and the operative intervention performed. Results: Among the 76 boys who underwent operations, 23 had degree 1, 47 had degree 2, and 6 had degree 3 hypospadias. Preo- peratively, 43 of the boys had symptoms that motivated the operation, including stenosis (38), a curvature (10) or both (5). Forty-three boys underwent operations with the MAVIS technique, 28 underwent TIP repair, 1 underwent a Duckett procedure, and 4 underwent Byar two-stage proce- dures. There were complications requiring reoperations including fistulas or ruptures in 26 (34%) boys. There were no significant differences in the rates of complications with surgery, fistulas (P = 0.4775), ruptures (P = 0.2417) or other complications (P = 0.5165) between the groups with or without preoperative symptoms, those with different degrees of hypospadias or those who underwent different operative methods for repair. Conclusions: The complication rate in this series was high. The study was prospective, and no boy was lost during follow-up. Because the complication rate did not correlate with the degree of hypospadias nor the preoperative symptoms, there may be a group of boys with hypospadias without symptoms for whose operations are questionable. The preoperative symptoms should be reported in future reports of the results of hypospadias surgery.