Characteristics of Patients Who Visited the Emergency Room after Prostate Biopsy: Single Center Retrospective Study

Abstract

Purpose: To educate patients and prevent biopsy-related complications, it is helpful to understand the causes for visiting the emergency room (ER). Therefore, we want to analyze the causes and factors of complications that cause patients to visit the ER after prostate biopsy. Materials and Methods: We conducted a study of in-patients who visited the ER of Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital after prostate biopsy from December 2008 to July 2015. Age, postoperative interval before visiting the ER, Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) score, symptoms in ER, prostate size, pathologic result, and number of biopsy cores were analyzed retrospectively. Results: Among all 1,694 cases of patients who had undergone prostate biopsies during a 7-year period, only 37 patients (2.2%) visited the ER. Diabetes mellitus (DM) is the most common underlying disease among patients with accompanying infection-related symptoms compared to patients with accompanying non-infection-related symptoms (p<0.001). In univariate analysis, DM (p=0.004) and CCI score (p=0.030) were statistically significant risk factors for infection, but only DM was significant in multivariate analysis (p=0.004). Prostate size (p=0.044) was a significant risk factor for acute urinary retention (AUR) in univariate analysis, but not statistically significant in multivariate analysis. CCI score was a statistically significant risk factor for bleeding (p=0.005 [univariate], 0.035 [multivariate]). Conclusions: AUR after transrectal ultrasound-biopsy is the most common reason for visiting the ER. CCI score showed correlation with bleeding and DM showed correlation with infection. Consideration of risk factors of complications after prostate biopsy will be helpful to the patients in the treatment and prevention of complication.