Forgotten Double J Stents – A Curse of COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction: At our tertiary care center, we have encountered and successfully managed 28 cases of forgotten Double-J (DJ) stents. We are eager to share our experience in handling such cases. Case presentation: In this paper, situations with Double-J stents that were ignored over two years (2021–2023) are retrospectively analyzed. The patient’s information has been carefully gathered and assessed with regard to the length of the indwelling stent, the patient’s complaints, the reasons behind their noncompliance, the kind of encrustations, the different treatments administered, the intraoperative complications, their management, and the final result. The mean age was 39.5 years (32-54 years), and the male-to-female ratio was 1.5:1. The average duration of stent indwelling was 18.5m. Based on the modified Kuppuswamy scale, most patients belonged to the lower socioeconomic class. Symptoms of storage and dysuria were the most frequent presentations. The intricate and severely encrusted stents were handled using a combination of endo-urological procedures, with staged treatments performed as needed. Simple retrograde cystoscopic removal was used to remove most of the stents. In our study, there was no mortality. Conclusions: People from lower socioeconomic classes and those with low educational attainment are more likely to have forgotten DJ stents. Pandemics like COVID-19, when access to elective healthcare was abolished, significantly impacted patient compliance for stent removal—hence the long list of forgotten stents.