Comparison of Subinguinal Microvaricocelectomy and Retroperitoneal Varicocelectomy in reducing the pain of patients with symptomatic Varicocele

Aim: To determine the efficacy of subinguinal microvaricocelectomy versus retroperitoneal varicocelectomy in symptomatic varicocele. Methods: 44 subjects were enrolled for this study, two groups consisting of 22 each by simple random sampling, done by balloting method. Postoperative Pain was observed using Visual Analog scaling and Infection was observed using Southampton scoring system. Results: Mean age of the study subjects was 31.75±10.18 years, In Subinguinal Microvaricocelectomy (SMV) group, average operation time was 66.60±14.80 minutes and in Retroperitoneal Varicocelectomy (RV), average operation time was 46.80±3.26 minutes (p-value 0.002). Hydrocele occurred only in 2(9.09%) treated with SMV and in Retroperitoneal Varicocelectomy, only 5(22.72%) hydrocele was observed. Recurrence occurred in 4(18.18%) RV treated group. No recurrence was observed in SMV. Average VAS score for SMV was 2.90±0.88 and for RV it was 3.8±0.42 the difference was statistically significant. Conclusion: Subinguinal micro varicocelectomy was better than retroperitoneal varicocelectomy in many aspects like in SMV, hospital stay, postoperative pain, infection rate, hydrocele formation and recurrence of varicocele is less than RV. Sperm count after six months of treatment was statistically significantly better in both groups but sperm motility was statistically better in SMV and sperm morphology significantly improved in RV group.