Objective: Hypospadias patients may present with the phenotype that features the migration of scrotum to distal penile shaft below a coronal/subcoronal meatus. Patients with this phenotype differ widely in the severity of the hypospadias and the complexity of the surgical repair. We aimed to investigate the operative findings and the outcomes of consecutive patients who presented with this phenotype.
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical charts of 31 consecutive patients who underwent hypospadias repairs from January 2014 to May 2017, and the hypospadias was characterized by i) the external urethral meatus at coronal/subcoronal region, ii) scrotal skin encroaching distally resulting in fixation of penoscrotal angle at distal penile shaft, and iii) urethral plate below the glans on penile shaft invisible or barely visible.
Results: The median age at the time of surgery was 15.5 months (10-63). The division of corpus spongiosum was noted at distal penile shaft (n=2; 6.5%), mid-shaft (n=5; 16.1%) and proximal location (n=24; 77.4%). The median ventral curvature before degloving was 45 degrees (10-90). Twenty-eight and 3 patients underwent tubularized incised plate and 2-stage preputial flap repairs, respectively. Twenty-nine of 31 patients required cutback of the hypoplastic urethra. At the time of urethroplasty, 2 (6.5%), 7 (22.6%) and 22(70.9%) patients underwent distal, mid-shaft and proximal repairs, respectively. At a median follow-up of 30 months (14-50), 6 (19.4%) patients developed one or more complications (fistula=3; meatal stenosis=5).
Conclusion: Patients affected by this particular phenotype likely require non-distal hypospadias repair with possibly higher complication rate and should be treated by surgeons with expertise in complex hypospadias repair.
Keywords: distal penile penoscrotal angle fixation; division of corpus spongiosum; hypospadias.
© 2019 Wong et al.