Post-traumatic urethral strictures in children: what have we learned over the years?

BACKGROUND Urethral stricture presents an uncommon but difficult urological problem in the pediatric population. Treatment protocols are different from in adults due to anatomical considerations. MATERIAL AND METHODS A thorough manual and Medline search was conducted to review the existing literature on post-traumatic pediatric urethral strictures, with key words: stricture, children, post-traumatic, urethroplasty, pediatric. RESULTS Opinion early on was that, due to the confined perineum, high incidence of supramembranous injury resulting in less predictable distraction defects of the posterior urethra and a high incidence of prostatic displacement, transperineal urethroplasty is technically more difficult than in adults and thus the transpubic approach is more feasible. Recent reports revealed that both approaches resulted in almost the same clinical outcomes for children with post-traumatic posterior urethral strictures. CONCLUSION The ideal reconstruction for the treatment of post-traumatic posterior urethral strictures in children is bulboprostatic anastomosis. This procedure should be initially attempted through the perineum in every case. A transpubic procedure should be done only when tension-free anastomosis cannot be accomplished through the perineum.