[Initial experience in microsurgical treatment of varicocele: Comparative analysis with conventional macrosurgical...

Varicocele is the most common cause of male infertility and the standard treatment is varicocelectomy. Having recently started performing microsurgical varicocelectomy (MV) in our centre, the objective of this study is to determine the differences in clinical outcomes and laboratory findings between MV and the conventional varicocelectomy (CV).

This is a comparative study between MV and CV in our centre between 01/2013 and 12/2016. We included patients with clinical varicocele and altered seminal parameters. We analyzed the following variables: age, laterality, grade of varicocele, testicular volume, surgical technique used, seminogram parameters prior to and after surgery and recurrence.

Between 01/2013 and 12/2016 46 varicocelectomies were performed in our centre, excluding from the study 12 patients due to lack of follow-up. Of the remaining 34, 19 (55.9%) underwent CV and 15 (44.1%) MV. There were no significant differences between the baseline characteristics of both groups. The preoperative sperm count was 30.1±35.6 10⁶/mL for MV vs. 25.6±19.9 10⁶/mL for CV (P=.64) and progressive sperm motility (a+b) was 17.7±13.6% vs. 16.5±10.1% respectively (P=.77). Postoperative sperm count was 29.16±33 10⁶/mL for MV vs. 45.6±55.5 10⁶/mL for CV (P=.32) and progressive motility (a+b) was 26.4±20.1% vs. 27.7±20.4% respectively (P=.85). We observed a tendency towards recurrence in the CV group (26.3%, vs. 6.7% for MV), although not statistically significant (P=.15).

Despite the learning curve with MV, we obtained improvements in seminal analysis similar to those with CV. Even though not statistically significant, there was a tendency to less recurrence in the MV group, consistent with what is already described in medical literature.