Hematologic parameters and neutrophil / lymphocyte ratio in the prediction of urethroplasty success

The pathophysiology of urethral stricture and its recurrence remains vague and one of the important causes is progressive infl ammation. It has been shown in recent years that the neutrophil / lymphocyte ratio is a marker of systemic infl ammation and is associated with prognosis in many cardiovascular diseases, malignancies and chronic infl ammatory diseases. We assessed simple systemic infl ammation markers preoperatively and surgical techniques for urethral stricture recurrence after urethroplasty.

After exclusion criteria applied, a total of 117 male cases operated with urethroplasty in our clinic between January 2012 and June 2017 were included in the study and analyzed retrospectively. Localization and length of the strictures of the patients, neutrophil counts and percentages, lymphocyte counts and percentages, and neutrophil / lymphocyte ratios in preoperative peripheral blood samples were statistically analyzed. Recurrent stricture during fi rst 12 months follow-up after the surgery has been assessed as recurrence.

The mean age of the patients was 54.12 ± 16.35 and the mean urethral stricture length was 3.44 ± 1.83 cm. Recurrence was observed in 30.1% of cases who received buccal graft, 30% in penile skin applied cases and 26.1% of cases treated with end-to-end anastomosis and there was no statistically signifi cant difference between neutrophil, lymphocyte, neutrophil / lymphocyte ratio and average stricture segment length between recurrent and non-recurrent cases (p > 0.005).

We consider that neutrophil, lymphocyte counts and their ratio prior to urethroplasty and the technique performed are not parameters that can be used to predict stricture recurrence. Prospective and randomized new trials with larger patient populations are needed to make more accurate judgments about the role of these inflammatory parameters.