Tension-free vaginal tape for the treatment of urodynamic stress incontinence: efficacy and adverse effects at 10-year follow-up

Background: One of the most effective and popular current procedures for the surgical treatment of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is tension-free midurethral slings.

Objective: To evaluate the outcomes of women with retropubic tension-free vaginal tape (TVT) for urodynamic stress incontinence (USI) after 10-yr follow-up.

Design, setting, and participants: This was a prospective observational study. Consecutive women with proven USI were treated with TVT. Patients with mixed incontinence and/or anatomic evidence of pelvic organ prolapse were excluded.

Intervention: Standard retropubic TVT.

Measurements: Patients underwent preoperative clinical and urodynamic evaluations. During follow-up examinations, women were assessed for subjective satisfaction and objective cure rates. Multivariable analyses were performed to investigate outcomes.

Results and limitations: A total of 63 women were included. After 10 yr, 5 patients (8%) were lost or no longer evaluable. The 10-yr subjective, objective, and urodynamic cure rates were 89.7%, 93.1%, and 91.4%, respectively. These rates were stable across the whole study period (p>0.99). De novo overactive bladder was reported by 30.1% and 18.9% of patients at 3-mo and 10-yr follow-up, respectively (p for trend = 0.19). A total of 84.2% of women with detrusor overactivity received antimuscarinic drugs, but 43.8% were nonresponders 12 wk later. At multivariable analysis, maximum detrusor pressure during the filling phase >9cm H(2)O (hazard ratio [HR]: 16.2; p=0.01) and maximum detrusor pressure during the voiding phase ≤29cm H(2)O (HR: 8.0; p=0.01) were independent predictors for the recurrence of SUI, as well as obesity was for the recurrence of objective SUI (HR: 17.1; p=0.01) and of USI (HR: 8.9; p=0.02), respectively. Intraoperatively, bladder perforation occurred in two cases; no severe bleeding or other complications occurred.

Conclusions: The 10-yr results of this study seem to demonstrate that TVT is a highly effective option for the treatment of female SUI, recording a very high cure rate with low complications after a 10-yr follow-up.