Short- and long-term outcome after perineal urethrostomy in 86 cats with feline lower urinary tract disease

Perineal urethrostomy is a surgical method for alleviating urethral obstruction in cats with complicated or recurrent obstructive feline lower urinary tract disease. However, long-term outcome of perineal urethrostomy in cats with feline lower urinary tract disease has only been described in studies with relatively few cats.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term prognosis, recurrent episodes, quality of life and survival times in cats with feline lower urinary tract disease who underwent perineal urethrostomy.

Data was collected from 86 cats from medical records, including 75 cats with at least 6 months survival, whose owners responded by questionnaire-based telephone interviews.

Long-term follow-up ranged from 1·0 to 10·4 years. The median survival time for all cats was 3·5 years after surgery. Forty-seven cats were still alive at the time of the study. Five cats (5·8%) did not survive the first 14 days after perineal urethrostomy surgery; another six cats (7·0%) did not survive 6 months. Seventy-five cats (87%) lived longer than 6 months; 45 (60%) of these were asymptomatic after surgery; 8 of 75 cats (10·7%) experienced severe signs of recurrent feline lower urinary tract disease. For 19 cats, data were available for more than 6 years. Among these, 13 cats were still alive at the time of this study. The six non-surviving cats had all been euthanased for diseases unrelated to the urinary tract. Eighty-eight percent of the owners categorised their cat's long-term quality of life as good.

This study shows that long-term quality of life after perineal urethrostomy in cats with obstructive feline lower urinary tract disease is good (as assessed by owners) and the recurrence rate is low.