[Recovery of urinary incontinence after retropubic radical prostatectomy. Results in 100 patients]

To shorten the time to recovery of full urinary continence after radical retropubic prostatectomy and to increase the postoperative continence rate.

One hundred and five consecutive patients were submitted to radical retropubic prostatectomy for prostate cancer, with curative intent, focusing our attention on three steps of the operation. First, to achieve a complete control of bleeding from the dorsal vein complex and to perform a minimal touch dissection of the urethral stump; second, to perform a conservative dissection of the bladder neck, and, third, to implement a vascular type, watertight, vesico urethral anastomosis. Continence was assessed 24 hours after catheter removal and at monthly follow up visits until full recovery and graded as dry if no dropping was visible and the patient was able to interrupt the urinary stream during micturition; stress incontinence, if any dropping was observed during abdominal strain between micturitions; and wet, if uncontrollable dropping occurred, and the number of pads needed per day recorded.

At a median follow-up time of 18 months, range 6 to 30, a total of 87 of 100 evaluable patients (87%) resulted as dry; 10 patients (10%) resulted as having a variable degree of stress incontinence needing one to three pads per day, and 3 patients (3%) resulted as wet. In 41 of the 87 dry patients (47.1%) continence was achieved within the first day from catheter removal, and in a median time of 4 weeks, range 2 to 16 in the remaining 46 patients (52.9%).

The results of total continence rate of the present study seem to compare to the recent literature except for the time to full recovery which is shorter; it is difficult to identify the contribution of each single surgical step.