Genitourinary Cancers

“Andrea and I lead this from [a] President/Vice President standpoint, but we also have a group of leaders from around the world, really representing all ethnicities, genders and others, because we wanted to make sure [that] we're inclusive, andmeet the needs and expectations of everybody,” says Philippe E. Spiess, MD, MS, FRCSC, FACS.

In a recent interview, Philippe E. Spiess, MD, and Andrea Necchi, MD, shared how they aim to develop an environment that emphasizes education, patient advocacy, and clinical research for rare genitourinary cancers.

“The geographical discrepancies, the social discrepancies, and the impact of these discrepancies in the possibility for the patient to access any type of cure or surgical intervention is critical,” says Andrea Necchi, MD.

“I really foresee this becoming a very critical society in this area for many, many years to come,” says Philippe E. Spiess, MD, MS, FRCSC, FACS.

Benefits include improved quality of life and symptom management.

“The take-home message is that testicular cancer should definitely not be a taboo subject,” says Shawn Dason, MD.

In a recent study, investigators sought to understand the current viewpoints of the general population on testicular cancer and testicular self-examination.

Tian Zhang , MD, discusses the adaptive phase 3 PDIGREE study comparing immunotherapy only versus immunotherapy/TKI regimens in patients with advanced kidney cancer.

“I think the big findings are that men know about testicular cancer, but they may not know a lot and they feel like they could know more,” says Shawn Dason, MD.

“Clearly, we are now in that era of TKIs in addition to checkpoint inhibitors, and so…it makes logical sense from the place we're at [in] the moment in renal cancer treatment with those combinations of treatment,” says Grant Stewart, MD.

“The good news is that we’re getting really good at treating cancer and we have more survivors, but we need to start thinking more carefully about the non-cancer risks following a diagnosis, one of which is cardiovascular disease,” said senior author Ashley Felix, PhD.

"I hope many readers have taken the opportunity to learn from the evolving science and gone back to review the basics of virology, immune response, and clinical trial development to gain a better understanding of this global pathogen," writes Raoul S. Concepcion, MD, FACS.

A nurse practitioner discusses how she supports multiple providers in a large academic practice.

The rates of mental healthcare use were significantly higher for patients versus healthy controls during diagnosis, treatment, and long-term survivorship.

Adam J. Gadzinski, MD, MS, highlights positive outcomes of telemedicine multidisciplinary urologic cancer clinics implemented by the University of Washington/Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

The data demonstrate how the implementation of a telehealth pathway helped reverse the initial urologic-oncologic outpatient volume decline at an institution during the pandemic.

Research indicates Lynch syndrome is associated with urothelial, prostate, and other urologic cancers.

Among patients with adrenocortical cancer, 60% to 70% relapse after surgery, making novel therapeutics an area of high unmet medical need.

The study also found that among patients with a primary testicular germ cell tumor (TGCT), the incidence of contralateral TGCT increased up to 20 years after initial diagnosis.

The risk was decreased further with each additional chemotherapy cycle a patient received.

"The 21st century has ushered in technology that has created more access and readily available information at our fingertips," Raoul S. Concepcion, MD, FACS.

Urologists and patients show resilience, but we must be better prepared in the future, says urologist R. Jonathan Henderson, MD.

Patients with cancer are particularly susceptible to negative consequences of COVID-19.

A 21-year-old male presented to the emergency department for evaluation of testicular pain and swelling 5 days after being struck in the groin.

A standardized, multidisciplinary approach led to similar outcomes based on disease characteristics, not sociodemographic factors.

Median overall survival is the same for both malignancies, study results show.

In this video, Eric Klein, MD, discusses a study evaluating the 17-gene Oncotype DX Genomic Prostate Score assay in African American and Caucasian American men.

The classifier can be a useful adjunct for clinical decision-making, an investigator says.

"In the era of BCG shortage, it would have been highly desirable to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of fewer BCG instillations for high-risk bladder cancer. However, reduced frequency of maintenance BCG instillations is associated with increased risk of cancer recurrence, albeit with fewer adverse effects," writes Badar M. Mian, MD.

The breadth of applications will widen as the number of new platforms grows, according Joshua Calvert, MD, MPH.