Tissue engineered indigenous pericardial patch urethroplasty: A promising solution to a nagging problem

Objective:Urethral stricture is a highly prevalent disease and has a continued ris-ing incidence.The global burden of disease keeps rising as there are significant rates of recur-rence with the existing management options with the need for additional repeat procedures.Moreover,the existing treatment options are associated with significant morbidity in the pa-tient.Long segment urethral strictures are most commonly managed by augmentation urethro-plasty.We explored the potential for the application of an acellular tissue engineered bovine pericardial patch in augmentation urethroplasty in a series of our patients suffering from ure-thral stricture disease.The decreased morbidity due to the avoidance of harvest of buccal mu-cosa,decreased operative time and satisfactory postoperative results make it a promising option for augmentation urethroplasty.Methods:Nine patients with long segment anterior urethral strictures(involving penile and/or bulbar urethra and stricture length>4 cm)were included in the study after proper informed consent was obtained.Acellular tissue engineered indigenous bovine pericardial patch was used for urethroplasty using dorsal onlay technique.Results:A total of nine patients underwent tissue engineered indigenous pericardial patch ur-ethroplasty for long segment urethral strictures,mostly catheter injury induced or associated with balanitis xerotica obliterans.Median follow-up was 8 months(range:2-12 months).Out of nine patients,eight(88.9%)were classifed as success and one(11.1%)was classified as fail-ure.Conclusion:Our study brings a product of tissue engineering,already being used in the cardio-vascular surgery domain,into the urological surgery operating room with satisfactory results achieved using standard operating techniques of one stage urethroplasty.