Surgical interventions in female urethral strictures: a comprehensive literature review

Introduction and hypothesis: Female urethral stricture (FUS) is an uncommon entity. Although there is no clinical consensus on the best modality of treatment, several studies have been published describing different techniques of FUS management. We carried out a literature review of the different surgical techniques used in the management of FUS and their results.

Methods: We performed a systematic search of the PubMed and EMBASE databases and several cross-references. We grouped the data available from the studies into four general treatment categories.

Results: We reported 35 studies (488 patients) with outcome measures; 53.48% of cases were presumably idiopathic in origin. A history of prior intervention was described in 91.29% of cases. As a surgical intervention, urethral dilatation (UD) had the lowest success rate of only 41.25%. In contrast, local flaps performed better (92.54% success rate) than local or oral grafts (87.30% and 89.94%, respectively). Only 9.43% of patients experienced mild to moderate post-surgery de novo incontinence; most of them recovered with pelvic floor exercises.

Conclusion: In practice, UD is tried first for FUS, at least once, before urethroplasty. In case of failure or short recurrence following UD, urethroplasty should not be delayed. In experienced hands, urethroplasty has a better outcome.