Abstract
Objective
To describe the patient experience and chief concerns with urethroplasty to improve
physician understanding and patient education. Online discussion boards allow patients
with urethral stricture disease (USD) to connect with other USD patients. It is unknown
how men use these web resources and what information is available about urethroplasty.
Methods
Three online forums featuring urethroplasty were identified by Google search. Thematic
analysis categorized the content of posts using manually applied codes, with inter-rater
reliability and descriptive statistics generated by Dedoose (Los Angeles, CA).
Results
A total of 140 unique posters contributed 553 posts to the forums. Posts were categorized
as information support (n = 651), issues posturethroplasty (n = 470), own experience
preurethroplasty (n = 336), feelings towards other posters (n = 312), what to expect
posturethroplasty (n = 265), feelings after urethroplasty (n = 228), and considerations
before urethroplasty (n = 134). Experience navigating the healthcare system with USD
(n = 141) and weak urine stream (n = 70) were the most frequent preurethroplasty complaints.
Postoperative pain (n = 164) was the most frequent issue. Patients expressed more
positivity (n = 126) and satisfaction (n = 120) than negativity (n = 33) with urethroplasty.
Conclusion
Patients participated in online discussions to share experiences with USD and urethroplasty,
receive emotional support, and find answers. Men were more often satisfied than not
with their urethroplasty outcomes, with 88% of postoperative feelings coded as positive
or satisfied compared to negative. This study provides physicians with insight into
the experiences of patients and how to best educate them.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: May 23, 2019
Accepted:
March 29,
2019
Received:
February 8,
2019
Footnotes
Funding: Jonathon Kaplan graciously supported this research effort.
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
