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The Urgent PC System (Uroplasty, Inc., Minnetonka, MN) appears to improve urinary symptoms associated with overactive bladder, according to results of a recent multicenter trial.

The Calypso System (Calypso Medical Technologies, Inc., Seattle) offers a significant reduction in rectal and urinary treatment-related side effects during high-dose external beam radiation for prostate cancer, recent study findings show.

Obesity nearly doubles the risk of developing kidney stones, although the degree of obesity does not appear to increase or decrease the risk, according to a recent study from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Open radical prostatectomy and laparoscopic radical prostatectomy appear to offer comparable rates of success, according to a recent study from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York.

Having too much available credit can hurt your credit score. A creditor can look at your available credit and have a concern that you'll run all of your cards to the maximum and declare bankruptcy.

While doctors in private practice explore cost-savings options such as sharing space with other physicians or peddling simple cosmetic procedures, more practices are streamlining their billing and collection programs.

Physicians are evaluating what the stock market nosedive has done to their portfolios and plans. Physicians who are at or near retirement have been forced to reconsider whether to retire, keep working, or go back to work if they are already retired.

For the past 9 years, a steady increase in the number of children being diagnosed with urolithiasis has been accompanied by an equally steady increase in the ratio of those children undergoing surgery for the condition.

Newly available urology products and services from Olympus, the National Institutes of Health, Spectrum Surgical Instruments Corp., and Midmark.

Publication of a major observational study from Harvard Medical School, Boston, followed within weeks by a science advisory from AUA and other professional organizations, adds further evidence of a link between androgen deprivation therapy and elevated risks of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, although this relationship has not been definitively established.

Recent updates to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology-Prostate Cancer include new recommendations on active surveillance, a new requirement for external beam radiation therapy, and revisions to the entire section on chemotherapy.

As this issue of Urology Times went to press, passage of major health care reform legislation-on which AUA and other health care groups had devoted considerable time, energy, and resources-was in jeopardy.