Traumatic Bladder Ruptures: A Ten-Year Review at a Level 1 Trauma Center

Figure 1

Revised institutional bladder trauma protocol. Surgical repair is performed in all intraperitoneal injuries and extraperitoneal injuries involving the bladder neck, concomitant rectal or vaginal injury, exposure to orthopedic hardware (i.e., pelvic fixation), or nonhealing state after management with catheter drainage. Revisions to our institutional protocol reflect standardization of length of catheterization based on the finding that catheterization less than 14 days resulted in decreased morbidity. Previously, there was no institutional consensus or protocol on length of catheterization, and it was highly variable.