urinary retention post hysterectomy

I have had a laparoscopic hysterectomy one week ago and am experiencing urinary retention. I have been doing self cath every 3 hours with 300cc residuals. I am a nurse, what else can I do? I feel no urge to urinate.

Hello! It seems that urinary retention became a frequent side effect of vaginal hysterectomy. Similar cases haven’t been seen in abdominal. The thing is that this inability to pass urine usually lasts for a day or two.

Have you talked to your surgeon? It is good that you are performing the drainage, think of all the other women who don’t know how it is done.

Anyway, as it’s been over a week, has your surgeon thought of an injury to the hypogastric plexi?

What kind of analgesia did you get? It has been showed that urinary retention can be reduced or avoided if patients were administered intramuscularly with analgesic agents as some patients used patient-controlled analgesia.