Guide to gaining approval for a clinical study

This article focuses on gaining approval for clinical research involving NHS patients, although the principles can be applied to other types of research. It can be quite a daunting process for the uninitiated applicant. Often it can be made less...

Bladder cancer – an overshadowed ‘volcano’

Bladder cancer has often been overshadowed by the limelight of prostate cancer. However, of all the urological cancers, bladder cancer is the only one which has shown a slight decline in age-standardised five-year survival rates over the last couple of...

HIV / AIDS – implications for the urologist

“It’s no fun to have HIV even though it’s viewed as a chronic, controllable disease. It means being wedded to the health system.” - Philip Berger, Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Toronto, Canada; and leading...

Fournier’s gangrene

Introduction Fournier’s gangrene (FG) is a rare but fulminant form of infective necrotising fasciitis affecting the perineum and external genitalia, which can rapidly progress along fascial planes. It most commonly affects men, but can occur in women and children, with...

What to expect when meeting a statistician

There are a growing number of statisticians working closely with medics from all specialties. They have different training but they are driven by the same goal: to perform high quality evidence-based clinical research [1,2]. In a perfect world we would...

Testicular microlithiasis

Introduction Testicular microlithiasis (TML) was originally described in 1970 in a healthy four-year-old boy [1] and the first paper regarding microlithiasis as an entity seen on ultrasound was published in 1987 [2]. Testicular microlithiasis is seen on ultrasound as small,...