The treatment pathway for advanced prostate cancer is both puzzling and complex and varies from centre to centre in the UK. The National Prostate Cancer Audit Report 2019 for England and Wales shows that only a quarter of men with...
Diseases that are rare or of low prevalence pose challenges to provision of high-quality care because of limited available knowledge and sparse good-quality evidence regarding uncommon presentations, mechanisms of disease, and optimal treatments. Approximately 80% of rare diseases are of...
US News & World Report (USNWR) provide rankings on a wide range of topics (education, health, money, travel, cars and law firms). In terms of healthcare, they suggest that their rankings (based on metrics) are a tool that can help...
The widespread use of prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing has led to diagnostic difficulties for patients and urologists. The sensitivity and specificity characteristics of PSA are far from optimal. To try and improve the predictive accuracy of PSA measurements, nomograms...
Scientific literature continues to expand exponentially, with an average doubling period of 15 years [1]. Staying up to date is an ever-increasing challenge and our time is constantly being consumed by attention-hungry social media platforms, slow NHS IT systems and...
This is a descriptive paper of micro CT scans of tubular mineralisation in 12 nephrectomy specimens. The authors noted that: in the small number of specimens examined, mineralisation started in the outer medulla and appeared to proceed distally along the...
This paper is an analysis of 36 years of radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma in the Mayo Clinic (1970-2006). In particular, it contains an analysis of the risk of renal fossa recurrence after nephrectomy (partial nephrectomies are not included)...
Rates of nephrolithiasis are higher in males than females. The cause for this remains unclear, however animal models have demonstrated an association between sex steroid hormone levels and lithogenesis. This relationship in humans is less well established. This study from...
This paper describes a retrospective analysis of 760 (608 males, 162 females) patients identified with mild antenatal hydronephrosis (defined by an anteroposterior (AP) pelvic diameter of 7-10mm in the third trimester and persistent postnatal dilation) looking at the incidence of...
The nutcracker phenomenon is defined as compression of the renal vein between the aorta and superior mesenteric artery and can present with loin pain, haematuria and a left-sided varicocele with treatment options including left renal vein transposition, superior mesenteric artery...
Jhaveri et al. and colleagues have produced a timely report on the incidence of ureteric injuries during robot assisted radical prostatectomy. They reviewed the complications of 6442 consecutive patients treated with robot assisted prostatectomy at the same institution by one...
With the rise of resistant organisms to most commonly used antibiotics, there is a plea for judicious use of antibiotics, especially for clean surgical procedures. Potential adverse events associated with antibiotic use include allergic reaction (including anaphylaxis), clostridium difficile infection,...