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AUA lobbyists face huge challenges on Capitol Hill involving four issues important to urologists.

While urology program directors are impressed with this year's group of residency interviewees, some flaws and some generational differences are evident.

Effective communication and documentation lessen the chances for claims and markedly improve the likelihood for successful defense of a claim.

The Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008, which was signed into law at the end of last year, has a dramatic positive impact on those who are subject to minimum distributions from their individual retirement accounts.

Most practicing physicians will have to deal with the medical malpractice industry at least once in their career despite their best efforts to employ standards of care and reasonable risk management.

Medicare will pay for services provided in the postoperative period if the services fall under these rules: "Treatment for postoperative complications that requires a return trip to the operating room (OR)."

There is a significant correlation between Comet assay results and the likelihood of pregnancy using ART.

The likelihood of successful sperm extraction may be higher at later stage sperm maturation arrest (MA), according to a study conducted by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston that was presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting.

Injecting an immunofluorescent dye into the testes may eventually help clinicians locate individual sperm and improve the yield from microdissection testicular sperm extraction (mTESE), researchers from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, reported at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting.

Seal strength tests on two laparoscopic instruments indicate that each offers separate advantages when sealing ureters and blood vessels, researchers reported at the World Congress of Endourology & SWL.

Men who respond quickly to varicocele repair have a better chance of fathering children than men who take longer to respond do.

Fascial closure is an effective method to prevent port-site hernias, even when non-bladed trocars are used, according to a study presented at the World Congress of Endourology & SWL.

Researchers are trying to identify which oligospermic men will respond to the drug clomiphene citrate.

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Efforts to standardize PSA assays were undertaken a decade ago, but PSA standardization remains controversial.

An innovative technique for tubeless percutaneous nephrolithotomy is a viable alternative to stenting the ureter and placing a nephrostomy tube.

Various aspects of shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) were the focus of several abstracts presented at the World Congress of Endourology & SWL here. Data from one U.S. group seemed to suggest, however, that SWL's "gold standard" offers better stone fragmentation and clearance than at least one newer device.

The World Congress of Endourology & SWL proved to be a fertile platform for technological advancements in ureteroscopy. Three studies in this area were particularly noteworthy.

I've never used them. I didn't even know they existed.

The updated size is slightly smaller than our former traditional tabloid size, but little else has changed.

Ramakrishna Venkatesh, MD, has joined the department of surgery at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, as an associate professor in the division of urology.

Large-scale data mining of gene networks in fruit flies has led University of Chicago researchers to a sensitive and specific diagnostic biomarker for human renal cell carcinoma.

Surgeons who warm up for 15 to 20 minutes with simple surgical exercises before performing an operation demonstrate a substantial increase in surgical proficiency, report the authors of a study from Arizona State University, Tempe.

Researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have confirmed their earlier findings that men who have too much calcium in their bloodstream subsequently have an increased risk of fatal prostate cancer, but they have also identified an even more accurate biomarker: high levels of ionized serum calcium.

Illegal sexual enhancement drugs tainted with the diabetes drug glyburide have been linked to an outbreak of severe hypoglycemia in more than 100 Singaporeans, according to correspondence recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2009; 360:734-6).

A panel of metabolites appear to be linked to aggressive prostate cancer, according to researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor.

Urologists and primary care physicians should discuss the use of 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors for prostate cancer prevention with men who have a PSA ?3.0 and who regularly are screened for prostate cancer and show no signs of the disease. That is the primary conclusion of a new joint guideline released by AUA and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Inger Saphire-Bernstein has been named manager of regulation at AUA. Her duties will include monitoring, identifying, and analyzing proposed regulations relevant to urology.