Bladder autoaugmentation in adult patients with neurogenic voiding dysfunction.

Bladder autoaugmentation offers an alternative to enterocystoplasties for patients with low capacity high pressure bladders caused by non-malignant pathology. In particular for patients with neuropathic hyperreflexive bladders, refractory to less invasive therapy, bladder autoaugmentation will attain comparable results with less impact on life quality compared to other bladder augmentation procedures. The procedure does not preclude later enterocystoplasty or deafferentations. Over the last 7 years, 50 patients were treated by this method, some of them for other than neurogenic voiding dysfunction. Substantial increase of bladder capacity and compliance resulted, at the cost of increased residual urine and the need for intermittent catheterisation in most patients. Some patients are able to perform complete voiding at will. The time lapse between surgery and functional rehabilitation of the bladder (substantial increase of capacity and detrusor compliance) cannot be predicted yet. In most patients this amelioration was observed 1-6 months after surgery, but in some the effect was equivocal for a year or longer. Low-dose anticholinergics appear to speed up the therapeutic effect. One patient had enterocystoplasty and one deafferentation later, one had rupture of the bladder, probably from the use of an artificial sphincter, and two are rated as failures because of psychogenic bladder-centred problems. Bladder autoaugmentation is a favourable treatment for patients who are motivated to wait possibly longer for functional changes to occur and are willing to perform intermittent catheterisation afterwards.