ISD for urethral stricture

What is it about?

This article is about intermittent self-dilatation (ISD). ISD is a treatment for a condition called urethral stricture where the urine pipe in the penis gets a scar in it and narrows down. This can make it difficult to pass urine, so some men choose to pass a plastic tube into their own urethra from time to time to keep the narrow section open. Doctors are not sure whether this is overall a good way to treat urethral strictures so we looked at the studies that have been done to try to find out.

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Why is it important?

What we found: the studies that have been done so far where men with urethral stricture sign up to an experiment where whether or not they do ISD is decided at random (randomised trials) were not large enough, or were not designed or ran in a way that could come up with a firm answer. So the main point about this article is that it proves that we still do not yet know whether ISD is a good thing to do, which men it might help the most, if it is good value for money or whether it causes harm.