I did some research on the issue of infection, and I found a nice paper on this .
Impact of Surgeon Case Volume on Reoperation Rates after Inflatable Penile Prosthesis Surgery
Ifeanyi C. Onyeji, et al. From the Department of Urology, Columbia University Medical Center Shown below is part of the abstract from the paper:
Dr Ifeyani , et al state:
Purpose: We investigated the impact of surgeon annual case volume on reoperation rates after inflatable penile prosthesis surgery.
Methods: The New York Statewide Research Cooperative System database was queried for inflatable penile prosthesis cases from 1995 to 2014.
Results: A total of 14,969 men underwent inflatable penile prosthesis insertion. Median followup was 95.1 months (range 0.5 to 226.7) from the time of implant.
….The rates of overall reoperation, reoperation for infection and reoperation for noninfectious complications were 6.4%, 2.5% and 3.9%, respectively. Implants placed by lower volume implanters were more likely to require reoperation for infection…….
Conclusions: Patients treated by higher volume implanters are less likely to require reoperation after inflatable penile prosthesis insertion than those treated by lower volume surgeons. This trend appears to be driven by associations between surgeon volume and the risk of prosthesis infection.
By the way, here is an interesting statement from the paper regarding infection rates and mechanical failure rates published by other papers:Dr Ifeanyi reports:
“studies report IPP infection rates of 2% to 5% at 5 years and 1.4% to 7% at 10 years.
Mechanical failure rates are reported in the same studies at:
4% to 10% at 5 years
and
10.3% to 24.0% at 10 years.
In addition, here is a key statement: Dr Ifeyani writes:
The reoperation rate for infection was 4.2% (217 of 5,200) in the era before the routine use of antibiotic impregnated implants and decreased to 1.5% (126 of 8,209) with the widespread use of antibiotic coated prostheses
and Regarding the importance of having a high volume surgeon:Dr Ifeanyi writes:
A variety of single center, single surgeon studies have similarly reported better reoperation-free survival for patients treated by high volume im-planters. Operative factors could explain this relationship. Higher volume surgeons work with more experienced operating room personnel, who are presumably less likely to inadvertently contaminate an exposed device, and these teams may be more likely to adhere to stringent procedure protocols that are believed to reduce the risk of IPP infection. Adherence to a set of best practices for infection prophylaxis, such as obtaining a negative preoperative urine culture, has been shown to significantly reduce the risk of IPP infection. Adherence to perioperative antibiotic prophylaxis recommendations and standardization of perioperative antimicrobial therapy might also be better with higher volume surgeons.
So , to summarize the paper, the key statistics to remember are:
#1 antibiotic coating has dropped the infection rate to around 1.5%,
and
#2 mechanical failure rates are between 10% and 24% at ten years.I hope this helps everyone,
TANGERINE
PS: Dr Ifeanyi defines a high volume implant surgeon as one who does more than 31 per year.
PPS, here is the link to the paper:
http://www.jurology.com/article/S0022-5347(16)31069-2/pdf