Vaginal delivery following single incision sling (TVT‐Secur) for female stress urinary incontinence

Abstract

In recent years, surgical treatment of stress urinary incontinence has become minimally invasive owing to the introduction of the transobturator route first and then single incision devices for positioning of mid-urethral slings. Although a number of case reports in the literature describe pregnancies successfully terminated both by vaginal delivery and cesarean section following mid-urethral sling positioning, there is still no definitive consensus on which is the preferred mode of delivery in these patients. We report a case of spontaneous vaginal delivery at term in a 41-year-old multiparous woman two years after the positioning of a single incision sling (TVT-Secur). The patient remained continent throughout the gestation and in the following 24 months. This case seems to further support the concept that sling procedures for stress urinary incontinence do not represent an absolute contraindication to spontaneous vaginal delivery, although the preferred mode of delivery must be assessed on an individual basis.

The short life cycle of a surgical device – Literature analysis using McKinlay׳s 7-stage model

“…Additional tabulation of the papers classified by McKinlay stage is presented in Table 2. Twenty-one papers did not fit a McKinlay stage classification: eleven technical reports [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], five cadaver or animal studies [26][27][28][29][30] and five reviews or commentaries [31][32][33][34][35].…”