Physician Develops New Surgical Technique Proving Effective Against Pediatric Urology Complications

A physician at WVU Medicine has developed a "new surgical technique to lessen complications for pediatric urology patients.”

The physician, Osama Al-Omar, “spent the last three years working to eliminate urethrocutaneous fistula (UCF), one of the most common complications of hypospadias surgery.” Hypospadias is a “birth defect that happens during the fetal development of the male reproductive organs. Patients with this condition have urological surgery to correct it between six months and one year after they are born. The UCF complication happens in about five to 10 percent of these cases.”

Al-Omar worked on a technique using “De-Epithelialized Rotational Foreskin Flap (DERFF) coverage [starting] in 2022.” This technique uses three layers of “well-vascularized tissue flaps over the urethral repair” compared to the typical one or two tissue flaps. Over 60 consecutive cases and a median follow-up of seven months resulted in no patients having UCF complications with this technique.

Next steps for this technique will include “working on collecting long-term data…by seeing patients more than one year after their surgery.”