[Complications in urological surgery: Monitoring and classification]

The objective of this article was to discuss the statistics of surgical complications in urology and the methods of collection and classification. In the absence of a comprehensive national registry of complications, we used statistics from insurance companies as indicators. They are limited by the exclusion of complications that did not result in a claim. Overall, urology is less exposed to claims than other surgical specialties. It comes far behind orthopedic surgery, gynecology-obstetrics and visceral surgery. The new techniques in urological surgery and in particular the rise of robotic surgery do not seem to have modified the number of claims handled by medical insurance companies. It is unfortunate that complications in urological surgery are not collected, reported, and discussed in order to develop prevention, treatment, and strategies for educational purposes. The lack of an established definition and classification of surgical complications, as well as methodological differences in the collection of related information, has hampered the evaluation of their public health and health economics impact. Awareness of this problem is growing among learned societies and practitioners. Complication reporting should be organized on a national basis and should respect the following points: - definition of the collection process according to a validated system. For urology, the Martin table revised by the EAU working group would be adapted; - classification of complications according to a validated system such as Clavien-Dindo or CCI.