Proximal hypospadias

What is hypospadias?

Hypospadias is a condition where the urinary opening of the penis is not located at the tip of the penis.

Proximal hypospadias

Your child has proximal hypospadias if the urinary opening is much lower on the shaft of the penis. This can often vary from a midshaft to a scrotal or perineal hypospadias urinary opening.

Proximal hypospadias

In proximal hypospadias, both your child’s ability to pee with a normal stream and their ability to have natural penetrative sexual function in the future are negatively affected. There is often a significant degree of penis curvature in proximal hypospadias.

Hypospadias management

When managing your child’s hypospadias, two main functional factors are considered:

1. Your child’s ability to urinate (pee) with a single urinary stream that they can easily manage.
2. Their ability to have natural penetrative sexual function in the future.

These two functions are the main goals in the management of hypospadias.

Proximal hypospadias is repaired with surgery. The goal of surgery is to achieve normal and natural urinary and penetrative sexual function. For more information, see Surgery for hypospadias.

Active Surveillance

At Sick Kids, your child will be actively and regularly monitored by the hypospadias clinic (Active Surveillance) before and after surgery. The goal is to follow your child’s progress to ensure they are healing well and to monitor their penis function as your child grows older.

How Active Surveillance works

It is important to follow your child before and after surgery to see how the penis is healing. After surgery, your child’s health-care team will send you a brief survey of questions about your child’s well-being on the first day after surgery. You or your child will also take and send progress photos of the hypospadias every day for the first 30 days after surgery through a secure eHealth service (MyChart), which will be automatically and confidentially entered in their medical record.

Active Surveillance for hypospadias will follow your child through 18 years of age and beyond.

At SickKids

If you have any questions about your child’s hypospadias, please use MyChart messaging to contact the urology clinic nurses. If you do not receive a response within 48 hours, please use the following contact information:

Urology clinic: 416-813-6661

E-mail: urology.nurses@sickkids.ca