DVIU (direct visual internal urethrotomy) is one of several treatments for a urethral stricture.
Next to merely dilating the urethra by basically stretching it out to increase the diameter, DVIU is the least invasive of the stricture treatments, involving only the insertion of a special scope, called a cystoscope, which cuts out the scar tissue (which is what strictures are usually made of).
All other standard treatments involve open surgery (guys, get ready to cringe) where the penis is sliced open to reveal the urethral tube for repair. This class of surgeries is called “urethroplasty.”
DVIU seems like it should be the best option, but the odds of having to redo it due to the stricture re-forming are pretty high. Long-term success rates for DVIU are usually stated to be between 0 and 50 percent. [Update: According to a Nov, 2012 article – Anterior urethral stricture review – in the Translational Andrology and Urology Journal, DVIU can have a long-term success rate of up to 74% under the right circumstances.] This is almost always due to the fact that scar tissue tends to continue to grow even after it has been cut away. The success rate depends on the location and length of the stricture. For example, a short stricture (1-2 cm) in the bulbar urethra can be cured in 50% of cases, according to AR Mundy’s Management of urethral strictures ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2585709/).
Read an excellent and detailed description of DVIU in the following article on the NYULMC (Langone Medical Center) here: https://www.med.nyu.edu/content?ChunkIID=620492
[…] or ARUT, for short. I wrote about the more common type of urethrotomy in my recent post, DVIU Treatment For Urethral Stricture, which basically means they can do the cutting, etc. through a scope without having to slice you […]