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Recent data show that a low-carbohydrate diet may have significant positive effects in men on hormonal therapy for prostate cancer, including metabolic effects. In this interview, study author Stephen J. Freedland, MD, discusses his group’s findings, ongoing research on diet and lifestyle changes in men with prostate cancer, and how he counsels patients.

It’s time to revisit billing for Medicare Part B drugs. A proposed demonstration project that every urologist should be aware of, a change in the “brown bag” rules since our last publication, and a continued loss of income by many offices are making the purchase and delivery of drugs less palatable for urology offices.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data: Part D Prescriber Public Use File for 2014 claims. Part of a broader effort to increase transparency about care in general, this dataset also gives very granular information about the prescribing patterns of providers and may be used by policy makers to further scrutinize the cost of prescription drugs in the United States.

A new laboratory study suggests that a widely available nutritional supplement has potential to become a new treatment for the wide majority of kidney stones. Clinical research is still pending, however, and there are important caveats about the findings.

A novel lidocaine-releasing intravesical system (LiRIS, Allergan) demonstrated promising efficacy and safety in a small proof-of-concept study investigating its use as a treatment for women suffering from interstitial cystitis with Hunner’s lesions, reported Kenneth M. Peters, MD, at the AUA annual meeting in San Diego.

In conjunction with Urology Times' recent coverage of maintenance of certification (MOC), we asked several members of the UT Editorial Advisory Board to weigh in with their thoughts on MOC.

After meeting its primary endpoint at 3 months in a prospective, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial, an intravesical pressure-attenuation balloon (Vesair Bladder Control System, Solace Therapeutics) for treatment of female stress urinary incontinence demonstrated durable efficacy and safety after 12 months of follow-up.

A serious effort to reform the federal physician self-referral law (the Stark law) to reduce the regulatory burden imposed by the statute on medical practices is underway in Congress, and organizations representing urology are encouraging lawmakers to take action. But there is a key component of the law that the AUA and others want to be sure is not changed.

Given the advancement in both pathophysiology and precision-guided approaches for prostate cancer, we assembled a panel of expert urologists to discuss clinically important aspects of ADT that will assist busy clinician decision makers in their optimization of outcomes for their advanced prostate cancer population.

Facing uncertainty in Medicare and increasing regulatory and insurer burdens, the leaders of organizations representing urologists across the country gathered in mid-August for the 9th Annual AACU State Society Network Advocacy Conference.

The authors of a recent research letter reported a 6% drop in incidence rates for early-stage prostate cancer in men 50 years of age and older from 2012 to 2013.

Although various calculators are available for predicting biopsy results in men with prostate cancer being managed by active surveillance, a novel model developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University is unique for its ability to predict a patient’s “true cancer state”; ie, the Gleason score that would be assigned on whole-gland analysis after radical prostatectomy.

As interest in using multiparametric MRI as a diagnostic tool for prostate cancer increases, urologists should know that a negative mpMRI does not rule out significant prostate cancer, researchers advised at the AUA annual meeting in San Diego.

A slow breathing technique guided by an iOS application was able to reduce the occurrence of vasomotor symptoms in a small study of prostate cancer survivors treated with androgen deprivation therapy.

Clinical outcomes of men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer treated with enzalutamide (XTANDI) after chemotherapy correlate with health-related quality of life both at treatment initiation and its change longitudinally, researchers reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago.