Corporoplasty under local anesthesia: Cost-effective improvement of the surgical treatment of Peyronie's disease

Abstract

Introduction and objectives: Peyronie's disease produces penile curvature that leads, in certain cases, to difficulties in having satisfactory sexual relations. The objective of this study is to evaluate the functional and cost-effectiveness results obtained in the surgical treatment of penile curvature due to Peyronie's disease under local anesthesia, comparing them with those performed under a general-spinal anesthesia regimen.

Material and methods: Two groups of patients undergoing corporoplasty are compared according to the type of anesthesia used. Group 1 consists of 32 patients who underwent major outpatient surgery and under local anesthesia from June 2016 to June 2019. Their data are collected prospectively. Group 2 consists of 30 patients who underwent surgery under general/spinal anesthesia with hospital admission, from January 2013 to December 2015, with their data collected retrospectively. Anesthetic and surgical procedure, postoperative functional results, degree of satisfaction and hospital costs between both groups are analyzed, considering p≤0.05 as statistical significance and analyzing the results with the SPSS 20.0 program.

Results: Of the 32 patients included in group 1, none required admission for intra or postoperative complications. In both groups, an improvement of the PDQ-test was observed without statistically significant differences, with the degree of global satisfaction above 95% in both groups. There were also no differences in the appearance of complications secondary to the anesthetic procedure or the hospital regime. We observed differences in hospital costs, being 44% lower for the group performed with local anesthesia.

Conclusions: Surgical treatment of penile curvature under local anesthesia improves the cost-effectiveness ratio with the same quality of care, degree of satisfaction and postoperative functional results, maintaining a similar rate of intra/postoperative complications. For this reason, we consider that corporoplasty can be successfully performed under local anesthesia.

Keywords: Anestesia espinal general; Anestesia local; Cirugía mayor ambulatoria; Cost-effective; Coste-efectividad; Enfermedad de Peyronie; General–spinal anesthesia; Local anesthesia; Major outpatient surgery; Peyronie's disease (PD).