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While it is often difficult to defend a case involving the removal of an organ for cancer that is then determined to be cancer free, the added claim of lack of informed consent for the procedure does not aid the defense in these lawsuits.

Just over a year ago, the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services issued a report declaring that Medicare payments for vacuum erection systems were “grossly excessive” and recommended steps to remedy the situation.

Urologists at the University of Southern California’s Institute of Urology in Los Angeles are taking robotic kidney surgery to a new level. Inderbir S. Gill, MD, MCh, executive director of the USC Institute of Urology, has pioneered the use of the robot in patients with complex (level III) inferior vena cava thrombi.

Advances in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer are among the great medical accomplishments of the latter part of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. Five-year survival rates for newly diagnosed loco-regional cancer advanced from 68% in 1975-’77 to 83% in 1987-’89 to nearly 100% in 2003-’09, according to the American Cancer Society. This victory, however impressive, is incomplete.

The addition of radiation treatment to hormone therapy reduces mortality in older men with locally advanced prostate cancer compared with hormone therapy alone, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

A genomic test for prostate cancer was able to predict rapid metastatic disease in node-negative, high-risk men managed by radical prostatectomy without adjuvant therapy in a recently published study.

Our January 2015 installment in the ongoing "New Frontiers in Prostate Cancer" series focuses on the challenges presented by high-risk disease. Here are some video resources on high-risk prostate cancer.

Our January 2015 installment in the ongoing "New Frontiers in Prostate Cancer" series focuses on the challenges presented by high-risk disease. Here are some recommended articles about the diagnosis and treatment of high-risk prostate cancer.

The 2015 omnibus spending bill canceled a $10 million appropriation for the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Congress also approved a bill that cuts Medicare funding for vacuum erection systems. Rationing care, whether undertaken by the IPAB or Congress, must be opposed when it arbitrarily selects services based on public perception and not medical necessity, writes Ross E. Weber of the AACU.

In this installment of our "Year in Review" series, we look at 2014's malpractice headlines, with commentary from Urology Times Editorial Council member John J. Mulcahy, MD, PhD.