A Rare Case of Anterior Urinary Bladder Wall Avulsionand Proximal Urethral Tear Following Spontaneous VaginalDelivery

Abstract

Substantial injuries to the maternal lower urinary tract during vaginal delivery are rare. In a review of 270,000 ICD-9 coding records between 1979 and 2006 in the United States, Frankman and colleagues reported the rate of bladder or urethral injury to be 10.3 per 1000 women for spontaneous vaginal delivery (SVD) and 4.8 per 1000 women with operative vaginal delivery (OVD). This was attributed mostly to the high frequency of simple periurethral laceration at vaginal delivery as opposed to actual bladder injuries.