[A long distance between home and hospital does not bother ambulatory surgery for ureteroscopy in French Guyana]. / Une grande distance entre le domicile et l'hôpital ne contre-indique pas l'ambulatoire pour urétéroscopie en Guyane française.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: French Guyana is 83,500 km2 wide (equivalent to 1/6 of France). Communes are distant. Public urology is set in Kourou only. These particularities led to develop ambulatory urological surgery including for patients living far away from the reference centre. We report our experience with patient ureteroscopy (URS). MATERIAL: The study is retrospective (2018-2019), and includes 125 patients. Among these patients, 19.2% live in Kourou, 71.1% live 40 to 100km from the hospital and 9.7% beyond 100km. Every patient had an outpatient procedure for rigid and/or flexible URS to treat stone disease, including in lower calyx [LC] (38.4%). Ambulatory surgery was also proposed to the patients living away with the usual restrictions. Complications, results and switch to conventional hospitalisation (CH) were studied. RESULTS: Mean stone size was 10,5mm (4-30), stone density was 1030 UH (470-1700). The postoperative complication rate was 4%. There were 90.4% 'stone free' patients (85.4% for LC). One patient was rehospitalised within 48hours for acute flank pain and 9 patients had a switch of ambulatory to CH 6 for discharge too late and 3 for complication (fever and/or pain). Distance between home and hospital was linked neither to complication rate, nor to switch to CH. CONCLUSION: Ambulatory URS is possible without further complications in selected patients living beyond 100km from the hospital, because of a specific organisation and an appropriate training of the caregivers involved in postoperative patient care. LEVEL OF PROOF 3.