Transurethral management of fossa navicularis strictures: A brief review

The management of fossa navicularis (FN) strictures continues to pose a challenge to urologists. This brief review details minimally invasive endoscopic techniques and open urethroplasty techniques, including meatoplasty, pedicled flaps, and buccal mucosal graft (BMG) urethroplasty. While open BMG urethroplasty has remained the standard of care given in its high success rates, there has been a revived interest in transurethral management of FN strictures. Advocates of transurethral FN surgery seek to combine minimally invasive transurethral techniques to minimize surgical morbidity while utilizing the reliability of BMG to maximize recurrence-free survival. This review seeks to briefly review endoscopic and open management of FN strictures, and present emerging transurethral FN stricture technique and data on success rates. A PubMed literature review searched “fossa navicularis,” “urethral stricture,” “transurethral,” and/or “transmeatal.” Relevant articles were reviewed and selected for inclusion. This review briefly outlines the risk–benefit profile of varying surgical techniques for FN strictures, and highlights new transurethral techniques for their management.