Introduction: The Holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) technique to remove residual adenoma has not been reported. Salvage HoLEP enables anatomical enucleation of residual adenoma in patients who have previously undergone surgical treatment. We describe not only anatomical insights into the frequent location of adenoma recurrence, but also the feasibility of the salvage HoLEP technique.
Methods: We retrospectively reviewed a database containing HoLEP video records for 35 patients out of a total of 535 individuals on whom HoLEP was performed by 2 surgeons (SJO & JSP) between July 2008 and June 2011. Group 1 consisted of patients who underwent salvage HoLEP due to recurring adenoma and Group 2 of patients who underwent HoLEP as an initially surgical management to treat benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH). We compared the dataset of pre-, intra- and postoperative parameters between Groups 1 and 2.
Results: In the analysis of the video records of Group 1 (n = 35), there was significant remnant tissue around the verumontanum and the lateral lobes were also incompletely removed by previous conventional procedures. When we compared pre-, intra- and postoperative parameters between the 2 groups, there were no significant differences, including operation time, duration of hospital stay. However, the duration of the catheterization of Group 1 was shorter than that of Group 2 (1.38 ± 0.55 vs. 1.90 ± 1.81 days, p < 0.001).
Conclusions: Even for cases of residual BPH, salvage HoLEP is a feasible and effective procedure for treating residual adenoma along the anatomical plane.