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Summary & Timescale of the Data

The 3-year data collection period was from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2016.

Data summary

2917 SUI procedures were recorded from 109 Consultants at 95 centres in the United Kingdom (2593 procedures for England only), including 250 private patients from 41 Consultants. Two of the Consultants that returned data are not BAUS members. 

91% of the operations (2,649 of 2,756) proceeded with no reported complications. There were 107 cases (4%) in which a peri-operative complication was recorded. Of the 1,832 (63%) patients with follow-up recorded, 1,756 (96%) had a record of whether or not there was a post-operative complication.  For 1564 (89%) patients, no post-operative complications occurred.

There were no deaths during the study period.

81.0% (2366) of the procedures were performed for primary SUI and 18.8% (548) for recurrent SUI. All data were entered by hand, and there was no bulk uploading of data from other systems.

  • Median number of cases per consultant: 20 (range 1 - 122)
  • Median number of cases per centre:  20 (range 1 - 133)

HES figures for 2014 to 2016 (inclusive)  indicate that urologists undertook 3,587 stress urinary incontinence (SUI) procedures in England (1318 in 2014; 1344 in 2015; 848 in 2016); the BAUS audit has, therefore, captured data on 72% of these.

Gynaecologists performed 20,155 SUI procedures in England during the same period (7445 in 2014; 7437 in 2015; 5273 in 2016). It should be noted that HES shows a marked reduction in these procedures during 2016 and, as a result, a number of centres no longer perform them.

Surgery for recurrent SUI

Surgery for recurrent incontinence is likely to be more complex. Our data show that patients undergoing surgery after a previous failed incontinence procedure are:

  • more likely to be catheter dependent after surgery,
  • more likely to leave the operating room (OR) with a catheter in place,
  • less likely to be able to pass urine after surgery,
  • more likely to start unplanned clean intermittent self-catheterisation (CISC),
  • slightly more likely to have peri-operative complications, and
  • twice as likely (2% vs 1%) to have post-operative Clavien Dindo complications of Grade III level or greater.

Timeline for 2014 to 2016 data

31 Jan 2017 Deadline for submission of data to BAUS
10 Feb 2017 Summaries of data returned to Consultant contributors for validation
10 Mar 2017 Second (revised) summary of data sent to Consultant contributors for validation
24 Mar 2017 Final deadline for corrections and additional data
Mar/Apr 2017 Data was extracted from the web-based database. Once extracted, the data was transferred to a Microsoft Access™ database & Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet, then imported into Tableau™ for generation of the final analyses.
18 Apr 2017 All contributing surgeons were sent a link to the BAUS website so they could see exactly how their data would be presented