Exploring the Legal Implications of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia Surgeries in the United States: A Comprehensive Analysis of Two Decades of Lawsuits

The United States (US) currently faces a medical malpractice crisis, and a survey done in 2006 informed that 63% of urologists faced an average of 2.1 medical malpractice lawsuits. Surgery for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is performed by 95% of US urologists. Hence, we postulated that these procedures might be responsible for a substantial number of medical malpractice lawsuits. We examined claims related to BPH surgery in various US courts. Data were collected from Westlaw and LexisNexis databases using the keywords "benign prostatic hyperplasia," "enlarged prostate," "surgery," and "malpractice" to search for cases from the entire US from January 2000 to December 2021. We extracted details such as the type of procedure, the plaintiff and defendant, the nature of the allegation, the alleged complications, the verdict, and the compensation amount. We found 30 cases in which the most common procedure was transurethral resection of the prostate (37%), with inadequate postoperative care as the most frequent reason for claims (33%). Urologists were the most frequently processed professionals (57%). The postsurgical outcomes that resulted in lawsuits were urinary incontinence (23%), erectile dysfunction (13%), and urinary retention (13%). Interestingly, 43% of the patients were inmates. Plaintiffs won only two (7%) cases: colon perforation after interstitial laser coagulation with Indigo laser and recto-urethral fistula after transurethral microwave therapy. Most lawsuits were related to postoperative incontinence and erectile dysfunction, with the verdict favoring the defendant in most cases. Inmates were the plaintiffs in a relatively high percentage of cases. Only two cases resulted in a plaintiff victory, wherein both cases presented unexpected and serious postsurgical complications.