Five cases of tape erosion after transobturator surgery for urinary incontinence.

Background: Before introducing the transobturator tape into our practice we undertook 52 transobturator tape procedures. The transobturator tape procedures were undertaken with an "outside-in" approach, using nonwoven polypropylene mesh with average pore size of 50 mum.

Cases: Five cases of vaginal erosions have been identified, 1 complicated by a groin abscess. All cases required further procedures to trim (n = 3), resect (n = 1) or remove (n = 1) the tape. One woman had a tension-free vaginal tape procedure. To date, 3 women remain incontinent.

Conclusion: Possible reasons for the complications include 1) surgical inexperience (unlikely, given that we have undertaken more than 2000 tension-free vaginal tape procedures without similar complication rates); 2) inherent susceptibility of the "hammock" position of the transobturator tape; or 3) the nonwoven polypropylene tape with mesh size of 50 microm itself may predispose to erosion or abscess.