Blogs@BJUI

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change…” (C. Darwin; ca.1857)   On Friday 18th March 2016, U.S. medical school students and graduates participated in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) with 42,370 registered applicants attempting to match into 30,750 PGY-1 and PGY-2 positions. This was preceded the same day by the Irish Higher Surgical Training (HST) Urology interview…

The April 2016 International Urology Journal Club on Twitter (#urojc) hosted a discussion on our paper, "Comparing Publicly Reported Surgical Outcomes with Quality Measures from a Statewide Improvement Collaborative". Published in JAMA Surgery on March 16, 2016, the paper was authored by Gregory Auffenberg MD, David Miller MD, Khurshid Ghani, Zaojun Ye, Apoorv Dhir, Yoquing Gao. I contributed as a member of MUSIC. It was an honor to have the paper selected for a #urojc discussion, and the authors…

The lead author from April’s Article of the Month is based in Knoxville, Tennessee. The cover shows the Knoxville skyline including the Sunsphere, built for the 1982 World's Fair. ©iStock.com/SeanPavonePhoto   Click here for this issue's Table of Contents              

Peer reviewing of journal articles may be one of the most unheralded and feel at times as the least rewarded of continuing medical activities we do. People give time, expertise and judgement to make articles of a higher scientific standard and are crucial to the nature of medical publishing. As an Associate Editor of the BJUI, I am aware of the significant contribution reviewers make. I also review myself for many journals. For me it is one of the best forms of learning we have available to us. This…

As you may know, we alternate the occasion of the BJUI Social Media Awards between the annual congresses of the American Urological Association (AUA) and of the European Association of Urology (EAU). Our first awards ceremony took place at the AUA in San Diego in 2013, followed by the EAU in Stockholm, and a really fun evening at AUA in New Orleans last year. This year, we descended on Munich, Germany to join the 13,000 or so other delegates attending the EAU Annual Meeting and to enjoy all the wonderful…

At its simplest, hypogonadism manifests as (abnormally) low testosterone levels, which require effective clinical intervention; however, there is little or no consensus on the definition, diagnosis and treatment of the condition. Indeed, at least in the USA, the issue of the (ab)use of testosterone replacement has been under the microscope because of a hypothesis, albeit flawed, linking it to increased cardiovascular risk. The need for consensus on the management of hypogonadism is increasing…

The International Urology Journal Club on Twitter is now well into its 4th year.  The subject for the March 2016 discussion was a paper published in the BMJ entitled “Second Malignancies after radiotherapy for prostate cancer: systematic review and meta-analysis”. Lead and senior authors, Chris Wallis and Rob Nam were kind enough to  make themselves available to participate in this discussion.  Rob Nam made use of the  #urojc guest twitter account. The literature was searched using…

Das bringt mich weiter! While the sun was shining in Munich, the 3rd day of the 31st EAU Annual Congress continued with very well attended plenary and poster sessions. And that is no wonder because the EAU Scientific Committee had created such an attractive program, including amazing plenary sessions during the morning and a plethora of informative poster sessions in the afternoon.   Professor Hendrik Borgmann (@HendrikBorgmann) has already covered highlights of the opening days 1 and…

Willkommen in München! I’m happy to give you some flavours of this year’s return of the EAU meeting to my home country after nine years of absence. Let’s start of with the first little episode that many of us might have encountered: Arriving at the congress centre, it took me only 1 minute to recognize that the EAU is always racing ahead: They placed the famous red London telephone box right in the centre of the entry hall. What a start! It created the scenery of joyful anticipation of EAU…