The abdomen is opened by the usual median subumbilical incision, and the
peritoneum covering the damaged duct is incised and its proximal end
exposed: the mucous membrane of the ureter is reflected like a cuff. An
opening is made in the bladder wall in a situation convenient for making
the junction, and two centimetres of the ureter are allowed to project
freely into the vesical cavity, ‘à la façon d’un battant de cloche.’ The
ureter is secured by sutures to the vesical mucous membrane, and to the
muscular coat of the bladder. The sutures should be of thin catgut and
must not perforate the bladder or the ureteral walls. The bladder itself
near the junction should be attached by sutures to the adjacent
peritoneum to prevent dragging (Fig. 27).
Lutaud significantly points out that we know little of the subsequent
fate of ureters which have been engrafted into the bladder. The
immediate results have been successful, but there is good reason to
believe that when a ureter has been engrafted into the bladder, its
walls become sclerosed by a chronic ureteritis, and its lumen is
gradually stenosed. These changes take place slowly and cause little or
no discomfort in connexion with the kidney or the bladder, so that they
pass unnoticed.
If the opinion expressed by Lutaud, that the ureter becomes stenosed
after uretero-cysto-neostomy, is found to be a constant, or even a
frequent, sequel to the transplantation of a ureter into the bladder, it
will cause surgeons to be careful, and not follow too literally the
advice given by some writers to the effect that in performing the
‘radical operation’ for cancer of the cervix, if the ureters are
implicated these ducts may be divided and their proximal ends engrafted
into the bladder.
Lockyer, in removing a burrowing fibroid, wounded the bladder and
divided the right ureter; he sutured the vesical incision and removed
the right kidney. During the twenty-four hours following the operation
there was anuria. The abdomen was reopened and then it was found that
the left ureter had also been divided. The proximal end of this ureter
was engrafted into the bladder through the wound which had been already
sutured. Convalescence was disturbed by a urinary fistula. The woman
recovered and reported herself in good health three years later.
It has happened that after nephrectomy for the cure of a ureteral
fistula, the sequel of a ‘radical operation’, the remaining ureter
became thoroughly blocked by recurrent growth and the patient died from
anuria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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