Journal Reviews
Is the safety wire during ureteroscopy mandatory?
Traditional principles of ureteroscopic training involve the almost religious passage of a safety guide wire (SGW) into the ureter prior to ureteroscopy (URS). The authors compare the clinical outcomes of URS for ureteral stones in two university hospitals with opposite...
Managing staghorn calculi – a return to the dark ages of stone surgery with the aid of the robot
Khurshid Ghani and colleagues present a novel, yet all too familiar, approach to the management of patients with staghorn calculi, in the form of anatrophic nephrolithotomy - however with the aid of a robot. The aim of this study is...
Long-term consequences of posterior urethral valves
These two papers give a very good summary of the long-term effects of posterior urethral valves (PUV) into adulthood and are worth a read. Pereira et al. It is well known that the consequences of posterior urethral valves extend well...
The GMS hypospadias score
Hypospadias surgery has been carried out for decades. Descriptive parameters for hypospadias severity are variable and difficult to reproduce. The severity of abnormalities lies along a continuous spectrum. The paediatric urological fraternity is attempting to develop more reliable comparators for...
Antimuscarinics and behaviour in patients with spinal dysraphism
Since the 1980s patients with spinal dysraphism have had aggressive bladder management with clean intermittent catheterisation and anticholinergic therapy from early on in life. This strategy aims at improving lower and therefore upper urinary tract function thus decreasing the risk...
Long-term bladder drainage: blessing or disaster in disguise
Chronic bladder dysfunction occurs in many neurologic disorders e.g. multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, etc. Suprapubic catheters (SPC) are inserted every day and every urology department has a pool of ‘difficult’ patients who keep coming back. This paper compares SPCs...
Urethral sphincter function before and after radical prostatectomy
This paper from Holland will be useful for urologists involved in radical prostatectomy (RP) for cancer of the prostate. It presents a PubMed search between 1980 and 2012. Twenty-five out of 124 articles were further analysed, mainly English-language papers. Several...
Can antibiotics reduce ‘unnecessary’ prostate biopsies?
With numerous factors capable of influencing prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels and therefore the likelihood of biopsy, this multi-centred randomised controlled trial (RCT) was designed to see if two weeks of ciprofloxacin compared to placebo would significantly reduce PSA levels...
Has laparoscopic radical prostatectomy had its day?
Over recent years there has been a massive uptake in robotic surgery particularly for robot-assisted prostatectomy. The drive for this has been patient and physician led with little in the way of prospective randomised trials showing benefits over established operative...
Surgical and pathological outcome of partial nephrectomy: robotic versus laparoscopic approach
Nephron sparing surgery has become the standard surgical treatment for small renal masses (<4cm). Laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN) is shown to be superior to the open approach (OPN) in peri and postoperative morbidity; however, it requires advanced skills and has...
The role of continuous prophylactic antibiotics following JJ stent insertion
Urinary tract infections (UTI) and stent-related symptoms (SRS) are frequently recognised complications of ureteric stent placement. Antibiotic administration at induction prior to ureteric stent insertion is recommended by the European Association of Urology (EAU). Commencing prophylactic antibiotics for the ‘entire...
Can PET/CT help in selecting treatment for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer more appropriately?
Radical cystectomy is one of the most drastic procedures that urological patients have to undergo with a five-year mortality of around 50% in those with organ-confined disease at presentation. Traditional imaging is with contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) but lymphadenectomy often...
