Treatment of female stress urinary incontinence using suburethral slings: comparative, retrospective, observational study of two surgical techniques.

OBJECTIVE The treatment of female stress urinary incontinence has undergone a revolution in recent years due the emergence on the market of suburethral slings. The aim of this study is to compare two surgical techniques for treating stress urinary incontinence: Monarc™ (transobturator suburethral sling) and MiniArc(®) (single-incision suburethral mini-sling). MATERIAL AND METHODS Comparative, retrospective, observational study from January 2005 to December 2011 on 317 women diagnosed with stress urinary incontinence. Of these, 214 were treated with the Monarc™ transobturator suburethral sling, and 103 were treated with the MiniArc(®) mini-sling. The results were treated with SPSS v.15 software, and the statistical significance was P≤.005. RESULTS The two patients groups were homogeneous in terms of age, number of births, presence of urgency urinary incontinence and prior hysterectomy. There were significant differences in hospital stay, surgical time and early complications in favour of the MiniArc(®), technique, but overall there were no significant differences in the late complications. Some 84% of the patients treated with the Monarc™ transobturator sling were cured compared with the 72% of patients in whom we implanted a MiniArc(®), a difference that was statistically significant. CONCLUSION We need to perform more high-quality, prospective and randomised studies with larger numbers of patients and longer follow-up times to confirm or disprove the difference that we found in the success rate for the Monarc™ transobturator suburethral sling.