Noninfectious complications common after transrectal prostate needle biopsy

Compared with infections, noninfectious complications are more than twice as common following transrectal prostate needle biopsy (TRUS PNB), reports a recent study.

The researchers retrospectively reviewed 8,102 biopsies performed between 2015 and 2016. Overall, 277 procedures had postoperative complications, yielding an overall rate of 3.4 percent. Noninfectious complications occurred at around 2.5 times the frequency of infections (2.5 percent vs 0.9 percent).

Common complication events included urinary or rectal bleeding (n=74; 0.9 percent), urinary retention (n=70; 0.9 percent), vasovagal syncope (n=13; 0.2 percent), and severe postoperative pain (n=10; 0.1 percent). Of note, more than half (56 percent) of noninfectious complications necessitated a visit to the emergency department, while more than a quarter (27 percent) led to hospital admission for monitoring.

Logistic regression found that higher TRUS prostate volume was a significant predictor of postprocedure urinary retention (odds ratio, 1.07, 95 percent confidence interval, 1.02–1.11; p=0.002). No predictors of bleeding were found.

Several study limitations are worth noting, the researchers said. These include its retrospective nature, the possibility of recall bias, and the inconsistency of documentation across the different centres included.

“Nonetheless, we believe this series from over 8,000 biopsies performed by over 100 urologists provides robust and meaningful outcomes data that aid in patient counseling prior to TRUS PNB,” they said.