Elements of Surgery

by Robert Liston

Should the surgeon fail in passing the catheter, the bladder must be relieved at all hazards; and if the prostate be sound puncture by the rectum may be performed. This is neither a difficult nor a dangerous operation, else it would not be so often resorted to; it does not require so much skill and management as does the passing of a catheter. Neither is it painful to the patient; the parts to be perforated are thin, there is scarcely any effusion of blood, and all is done in the dark. But it is an operation which should never be thought of, unless as a last and desperate remedy; it is one in which I have had no personal experience, though when a student of surgery I have seen it done a few times. The procedure gives temporary relief, but then the urethra still remains to be put into a proper condition; a man cannot always void his urine and excrement through one common cloaca. If the urethra be cleared, the recto-vesical aperture may soon close. After the bladder is relieved, the urethra may become quieter, and admit of an instrument being more easily passed; but it is of very great consequence to effect the introduction of a catheter at the first.

Rather than puncture the bladder, the stricture should be cut down upon, and an opening made into the dilated part of the urethra behind the obstruction. A firm silver catheter is passed down to the stricture, and retained there by an assistant; an incision in the line of the central raphe—supposing the constricted part to be in the perineal region—is made over the extremity of the instrument, the contracted part of the urethra is divided, and the catheter passed on into the bladder. Thus, even in the worst cases, the natural canal is at once established. In every instance of difficulty and complication, the catheter, however passed, should be retained for two or more days. The above is the only admissible mode of puncturing by the perineum. It has been proposed to reach the bladder from the perineum either by extensive incisions or by the random thrust of a long trocar; the latter mode is unscientific, the former is unnecessarily painful, serious, and difficult; both are dangerous, and to be avoided.

The symptoms of extravasation of urine have been already detailed. The practice must be bold, and adopted without hesitation or delay. No bulging or fluctuation in the perineum is to be waited for. It is to be kept in view, that the escape of urine into the open cellular tissue may occur in a case of bad stricture, from rapid ulceration or sloughing, without any of the dilated portion of the canal behind, induration or abscess having preceded it; in the greater number of cases the infiltration arises from the giving way of the parietes of a cavity comunicating with the canal. Urinary infiltration thus supervenes upon urinous abscess. Extravasation can never be mistaken or overlooked by a man of any experience, and who is endowed with common observation. The effect and extent of the perineal fascia must be borne in mind; it diminishes or precludes—when the point at which the urethra has given way is interior to it—external appearance of the mischief, and by confining the deleterious fluid increases the infiltration internally. A free and deep incision holds out the only chance of relief; punctures or trifling scratches are worse than useless; neither is there any need of passing bougies or catheters, or of puncturing the bladder.

The following instructive case may be briefly detailed. A man applied at a public hospital for relief, with a large swelling in the hypogastrium, occasioned by extensive infiltration of urine into the cellular tissue of the abdominal parietes. The tumour was mistaken for distention of the bladder, and a long trocar was plunged in above the pubes without a drop of urine escaping. The patient died during the night. The bladder was found contracted, and the external cellular tissue of the abdomen full of urine, from the giving way of the urethra.

When judicious and energetic practice is adopted without delay, patients often make wonderful recoveries. The following may serve as an example:—An elderly man laboured under retention, and his bladder became distended to a very great degree; attempts had been made to relieve him, but proved unsuccessful. A catheter was passed, and retained for three days. During my absence in the country retention again occurred, followed by extravasation. On my return I found him insensible, but immediately turned him round in bed, and opened the perineum freely, giving vent to fetid urine, sloughs, and matter. Next day he was delirious, and knew no one; he hiccoughed, and had cold extremities; “he fumbled with the sheets,” and “his nose was as sharp as a pen.” A physician in attendance, well acquainted with disease, declared that he could not live six hours. But the urine had a free exit, the hiccough ceased on the exhibition of spiritus ammoniæ aromaticus, and wine and brandy were poured into him liberally, the only favourable symptom being, that he still retained the power of swallowing—when that is lost, all is generally lost. He took soup along with the stimulants readily and greedily, and, to the astonishment of every one, recovered rapidly; afterwards the stricture was got rid of, and restoration to perfect health completed. Many cases of similar import might be related, all showing the great danger of extravasation of urine, and the advantage of early and decided treatment. I once also witnessed, in the Royal Infirmary, an unexpected recovery from extravasation into the corpus spongiosum urethræ. This occurrence is always attended with most imminent risk; and is generally the result of retention from stricture. The urine escapes into the bulb, or anterior to it. Alarming constitutional symptoms quickly supervene; rapid sinking is threatened. The whole penis, scrotum, and perineum are swollen, but the swelling is hard, and most marked in the glans and along the course of the urethra. The glans blackens, unhealthy abscesses form in the spongy body, and before these give way, or at least before the sloughs begin to separate, the patient usually perishes. The man to whom I allude, however, recovered, retaining a part of the penis, as well as a considerable portion of its integuments; the rest sloughed and were discharged.

In regard to retention from swelling at the neck of the bladder, it may be observed, that spasm of that part of the viscus has been, by some, considered as a cause of the affection; it is not easy to explain or understand how this should occur, and such an idea is a bad one for him to entertain who enters on the treatment of the disease. The capacity of the bladder varies much in cases of enlarged prostate; in general the organ bears a good deal of distention, and the urgent symptoms do not appear rapidly. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the surgeon, immediately on being called, to relieve the bladder. When the prostate is very large, and retention has continued long, it is impossible to reach the cavity by a common catheter. Those who employ this instrument in such cases are often much puzzled; they continue long in their fruitless endeavours, and, from rashness, generally produce a discharge of much blood, but no urine; they then become alarmed on finding the instrument always filled with coagulum, and suppose that blood has been effused into the bladder, and that the symptoms of retention have been thus introduced. A catheter is to be used, which is two or three inches longer than the common one, possessing a larger curve, of such a size as to admit of being passed easily, and not so small as to render it liable to interruption from entanglement in the lacunæ of the urethra. The posterior part of the urethra is elongated to no slight extent by the enlargement of the prostate, and, besides, the whole canal is stretched by the distended bladder rising high in the abdomen. In short, the bladder is farther away from the surgeon than it is in other cases of retention, and he requires an instrument proportionally long in order to reach it. No time is to be put off. A cautious and persevering endeavour must be made to bring away the urine by the natural passage. Force is prejudicial and unnecessary. It is true that the projecting third lobe of the prostate has not unfrequently been perforated by the catheter, and no unpleasant consequences have resulted, the urine continuing to flow, perhaps freely, through the artificial opening there; but still it is always an injury, often an unnecessary injury, and as such to be avoided. The catheter is to be passed steadily on till it approaches the prostatic region; it is then to be guided by the forefinger of the left hand introduced into the rectum, and when the point is lost in passing through the gland, the instrument is carefully carried forward by depressing the handle, and, if long enough, it will infallibly reach the urine and relieve the bladder. It must, indeed, be a very extraordinary case in which the bladder cannot be reached with the catheter.

When enlargement of the prostate, whether of the whole gland or principally of the third lobe, presents an insuperable obstacle to the passage of the catheter, and when the surgeon has taken care to assure himself that such is the case, I conceive that he ought to perforate the gland in the direction of the natural course of the urethra, not with the catheter, but with an instrument better adapted for the purpose—a long canula, or catheter with open end, very slightly curved towards the extremity, provided with two wires, one blunt and bulbous at the extremity, the other pointed as a trocar, both made so as to project a short way beyond the end of the canula. The canula is passed on to the resisting body, its orifice occupied by the bulbous wire, which is then withdrawn, and its place supplied by the trocar, the instrument being held steadily in the proper direction. The trocar, or stilet, is pushed forwards along with the canula; the former is then withdrawn, and the latter retained. This proceeding I consider quite safe in the hands of an experienced surgeon, one well acquainted with the urinary passages—but not otherwise. It is in every way preferable to puncture of the bladder above the pubes, to puncture behind the prostate, or to puncture of the prostate along with wound of the rectum.

As before noticed, I never have had occasion to puncture the bladder but once—and that was above the pubes, and for an unusual affection of the bladder, the particulars of which have been already detailed. The result of the experience of several eminent surgeons, both in this country and abroad, is similar.

Elastic gum catheters have been recommended in this affection, and it is said that after the instrument has been passed to the prostatic region, its entrance into the bladder is facilitated by gently withdrawing the stilet, the point of the catheter being thereby curved upwards, and, as it were, lifted over any central projection of the prostate that may impede its straightforward introduction. But according to my experience, this instrument is far inferior to the firm and long silver catheter.