Scott Tennant

There will always be a place for laboratory research in andrology, but the past year has been one of surgical advancements for those who diagnose and treat male infertility.

AUA has formed a task force to create a pool of qualified surgeons who will teach and perform male circumcision to help prevent the spread of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa.

The oral angiogenesis inhibitor pazopanib (Votrient) more than doubled progression-free survival versus placebo in a randomized, phase III trial of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.

Low-income prostate cancer patients are far more likely to undergo surgery for their disease if they are treated in a county hospital versus a private provider.

In children who show signs of readiness, toilet training is best initiated between the ages of 27 and 32 months.

BPH and lower urinary tract symptoms are very common, increase as a function of age, and are often managed through watchful waiting.

Androgen deprivation therapy leads to an increased risk of bone fractures and other side effects of estrogen deficiency in men with prostate cancer, but those effects can be successfully treated with the use of an oral selective estrogen receptor modulator, suggest the results of a large, prospective, randomized tria presented at the AUA annual meeting in Chicago.

Light-activated drug therapy for BPH has been shown to be safe and painless in a phase I/II trial.

Botulinum toxin A (Botox) is highly effective as a treatment for refractory urge incontinence symptoms in women with urodynamic evidence of detrusor overactivity incontinence, but patients require assessment for transient urinary retention.

A recent multicenter study provides some justification for the increasing popularity of transobturator slings in the treatment of stress urinary incontinence in patients with and without concurrent pelvic organ prolapse.

Cleveland-Intraprostatic injection of mepivacaine epinephrine through a specialized catheter reduces the need for analgesia, as well as treatment time and energy consumption in patients undergoing high-energy transurethral microwave thermotherapy (TUMT) for BPH, researchers reported here.

Ankara, Turkey-Elevated PSA levels and the presence of urinary tract infection are the symptomatic parameters that are most predictive of acute urine retention in men with BPH, according to a group of Turkish researchers. Their data also suggest that plasmakinetic resection of the prostate may provide 1-year outcomes similar to those of open prostatectomy in BPH patients who do not have retention.

Cleveland-Routine transposition of an anterior crossing vessel during laparoscopic pyeloplasty may be unnecessary, appears to depend on the surgeon's intraoperative subjective assessment of its obstructive nature, and seems to occur more often when a transperitoneal approach is used, Cleveland Clinic investigators reported.

Cleveland-The size and volume of upper-urinary-tract calculi do not necessarily predict outcomes of ureteroscopic lithotripsy, but stones of larger size and volume require significantly more time and effort to clear, according to a group of urologists from St. Paul, MN.

New York-Because of potential future fluctuations in PSA levels, NewYork researchers recommend that a second PSA reading be taken several weeksafter initial measurement and prior to recommending biopsy.

Seattle-Despite the way it was portrayed in some of the lay media, the authors of a recent study on the "overdiagnosis" of prostate cancer insist their work should not be construed as hostile to the practice of PSA screening. In fact, says one investigator, results of the study paint an overall favorable picture of screening.