Comparison of single-use and reusable flexible ureteroscope for renal stone management: a pooled analysis of 772 patients

Abstract

Flexible ureteroscopy is a common therapy for patients with renal calculi. In recent years, the prevalence of single-use flexible ureteroscope (FURS) use has been on the rise. Thus, several trials have been conducted to compare the efficacy between single-use and reusable FURS. The aim of this meta-analysis was to systematically assess the effectiveness and safety of single-use vs. reusable FURS in treating renal stones.PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and EMBASE were researched to identify relevant studies up to September 2019. Article selection was performed through the search strategy based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses criteria. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was applied to assess the methodological quality of non-randomized controlled trials, and the methodological quality of randomized controlled trials was evaluated using the Jadad scale. A total of five studies with 772 patients were included in the meta-analysis, including two randomized controlled trials, two single-centre prospective studies, and one prospective case-control trial. The pooled results showed that single-use FURS was associated with a higher stone-free rate (SFR) (OR: 1.50; 95% CI, 1.06-2.12; P=0.02) than reusable FURS.

Comparison Between Single-Use Flexible Ureteroscope and Reusable Flexible Ureteroscope for Upper Urinary Calculi: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The previous study (30), which compared the su-fURS and ru-fURS for the renal stones, was different from our study results, especially in terms of OT and SFR. Sometimes, the SDs are not presented in the article and researchers need to estimate SDs from other related information such as standard errors, confidence intervals, p-values, and t-values.…”

Efficacy and safety of single-use flexible ureteroscope（ZebraScopeTM）for the treatment of upper urinary tract calculi ≤ 2 cm

“…Since the single-use FURS been introduced, they have gained widespread popularity with their e cacy becoming closer to reusable scopes [22,23] . Yongchao Li nd single-use FURS had a higher SFR in comparison with reusable FURS, and the perioperative complication rate were comparable [24] . Furthermore, there was an outbreak of urinary tract cross infection as incomplete decontamination of reusable exible ureteroscope has been reported [25] .…”

Relevance of Adopting a Hybrid Strategy Mixing Single-Use and Reusable Ureteroscopes for Stones Management: An Economic Study to Support the Best Strategy

“…These results emphasize the importance of defining the case volume. Although many experts recommend the use of an HS based only on clinical cases [7,[19][20][21], our study indicates that the number of patients treated can also be used to accurately implement the best hybrid strategy.…”