A series of 161 patients with urinary stress incontinence and who underwent either Kelly urethral replication or Marshall-Marchetti procedures were reviewed in order to evaluate the usefulness of following Green''s criteria in the selection of type of surgery for stress incontinence. One year follow-up failure rate was higher in patients with type I stress incontinence (23%) than in type II stress incontinence (15.5%), and also when the choice of surgical approach did not follow Green''s criteria; statistical analysis of these data showed that differences did not reach a significant level (P > 0.05).