According to one well-refined simulation model, the cost in current dollars of treating 100 prostate cancer patients initially enlisted in an active surveillance program is $2,702,191 over 5 years. This is $1,013,422 less expensive per 100 men than any of the available immediate interventional therapies over the same span and could translate to substantial national savings.
During the debate about increasing the debt ceiling, the targeting of entitlements in cuts came as little surprise to urologists.
AUA Health Policy Chair Steven M. Schlossberg, MD, MBA, discusses important health policy issues in urology and how the AUA is addressing them.
Urologists are acutely aware of the cost of prostate cancer treatments and how they may impact patients' lives.
A high-volume surgeon will have good results regardless of approach, but that the surgeon with less experience might do a better job with the robotic approach.
Despite defeats of bills in several states, some urologists believe that threats to urologists' ability to provide ancillary services-essentially, their ability to furnish integrated health care-are not going away.
The national budget crisis that has consumed Washington threatens to worsen the outlook for physicians, urologists included, who hope to avoid a 29.5% Medicare payment reduction scheduled for Jan. 1, 2012 unless Congress acts once again to avert it.
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After a median follow-up of 10 years, the intent-to-treat with radical prostatectomy did not significantly reduce all-cause or prostate cancer-specific mortality compared with active surveillance.
Men with chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome appear to have a higher incidence of endothelial dysfunction and arterial stiffness, providing a possible link to cardiovascular disease in these patients.
Setting boundaries and appropriate processes for handling e-mail correspondence with patients can address many of the concerns urologists have about e-mailing patients.
In most urology practices, patients will spend more time with the office staff than with the physician. Therefore, it is essential that the staff is highly motivated to ensure that patients' interaction with the staff remains at a high level from the moment they walk into the reception area and check in at the desk until they make their next appointment and check out.
The newest urology products and services from Cook Medical, EDAP TMS, and Reflexonic.
Obesity increases the risk of lower urinary tract symptoms in older men, whereas exercise potentially prevents LUTS in this population.
PVP is beginning to challenge TURP as the gold standard for treatment of BPH.
In the hands of less experienced surgeons, robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy has a lower perioperative morbidity rate and sound early oncologic outcomes compared to other surgical interventions.
Early results from a prospective, randomized trial of men with clinically localized prostate cancer demonstrate robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy is a safe technique associated with less morbidity than open retropubic radical prostatectomy.
Surgical mesh products that are used during transvaginal surgery to repair pelvic organ prolapse (POP) should be recalled, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a petition sent to the FDA.
Patients matched on propensity to receive androgen deprivation therapy did not show an association between ADT use and cardiovascular mortality, report researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.
A new screening test may prove to be a promising tool for prostate cancer diagnosis, according to a recent study.
In an update to its 2004 recommendation, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has concluded that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for bladder cancer in asymptomatic adults.
An international team of researchers has identified five inherited genetic variants that are strongly associated with aggressive, lethal prostate cancer.
Nearly half of men undergoing radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer expect better recovery from the side effects of the surgery than they actually attain 1 year after the operation, recent study findings indicate.
Current cigarette smokers have a higher risk of bladder cancer than previously reported, and the risk in women is comparable to that in men, say the authors of a study from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD.
A newly launched clinical trial will assess the impact of a diet low in animal products on the health of men with low-grade prostate tumors.
A national transplant policy change to the relative priority assigned to tissue matching in allocating donated kidneys has given African-American patients greater access to the organs, say researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
The FDA has approved updated drug labels for medications containing pioglitazone (Actos), an agent used to treat type 2 diabetes. The new labels are part of an update to the agency?s ongoing safety review of pioglitazone and increased risk of bladder cancer.
When used as a supplement to an elevated PSA reading, a new urine test that detects instances of a specific genetic anomaly and the presence of the PCA3 marker can help men delay or avoid biopsy while identifying patients at the highest risk for clinically significant prostate cancer, the authors of a recently published study report.
Patients who undergo radical nephrectomy experience a significantly higher incidence of osteoporosis and fractures when compared with those who undergo partial nephrectomy, according to a recent study.