A Spectrum of Urological Emergency Reported at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital: An Experience

Abstract

Introduction: A substantial number of urology admissions constitute of emergency cases and sizeable proportion are urology emergency referral cases. There have been few studies conducted on this aspect but there lie geographical variations in the presentations of urological emergencies. Hence, this study was conducted to analyse various urological emergency presentations and their interventions. Objective: To estimate the proportion of urological emergencies and analyse the different type of urological emergencies with the required management. Materials and Methods: A hospital based observational descriptive study was undertaken in our institution over a period of one year. Results: A total of 11,139 cases were admitted in the urology department; of which a significant percentage (21.05%) was from emergency room. Majority of cross references came from the Department of Medicine (22.59 %). Renal colic (24.2%) happened to be the most common presentation in emergency room followed by acute urinary retention (14.7%). Among referred cases, hematuria was the leading presentation with 17.75% followed by traumatic catheterization (11.97%). Most common urological intervention in referred cases was supra pubic catheterization (27.20%) while it was percutaneous nephrostomy (32.78%) in directly admitted cases. Conclusion: Urological emergencies constitute a significant proportion of total urology admissions (27.18%). The most common non-traumatic injury was renal colic whereas traumatic was traumatic catheterization in our study. Most common surgical intervention in direct admitted emergency cases was percutaneous nephrostomy whereassuprapubic catheterization in within hospital emergency referral cases.

Keywords

• urological emergencies
• urological emergency referrals
• urological interventions