Blogs@BJUI

A famous version of a saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin states “...but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” As a urologic oncologist, I cannot help with the taxes, but strive to delay the latter when threatened by urologic cancers.  Our colleagues in andrology, however, are charged with the task of being sure the life lived is of high quality, and I am impressed at the large number of problems they face including infertility, erectile dysfunction,…

The management of patients with chronic pelvic pain attributed to chronic prostatitis has long been rather unsatisfactory. Even prolonged treatment with an aminoquinolone, such as ciprofloxacin, and an anti-inflammatory agent, or, alternatively an alpha blocker, seldom results in rapid resolution of the symptoms, and is commonly completely ineffective. We recently encountered a patient, effectively disabled by prostatodynia, unresponsive to standard treatment, who had been taking morphine to control…

Surgical management of prostate cancer is one of the most frequently performed urological procedures [1]. Available data suggests that surgeons’ experience is correlated with both oncological and functional outcome [2]. These initial observations stress the importance of concentration of prostatectomy in high-volume institutes. This centralisation could improve documentation and monitoring of outcome. The data presented by Røder et al. [1] from Denmark show a rapid increase in registered…

Which of us fancies ending their career with a spell in the clink? Being a surgeon in the UK has just become a whole lot riskier. We all know that in our job success can add extra years to our patients lives, by contrast, failure, can result in significant harm, or, in the worst circumstances, death. We all do our best, but sometimes things don’t work out. The sentence of two and a half years in prison for Mr David Sellu, who was referred a patient who developed peritonitis after an orthopaedic…

The ever increasing desire for instant access to information is a reflection of our times facilitated by social networks and by video and information technology. Nowadays, sport events are dissected and quantified from every possible perspective. We know almost real-time any detail of a soccer match: how many miles each player runs, how many good or bad passages of play, how many faults and so on, including if needed the details of heart rate and weight loss. The same and even more is available for…

Size (and shape) is important and sometimes strings should be attached, but quality matters most where the BJUI and stone disease are concerned … The Editor-in-chief of the BJUI has consolidated the journal's commitment to accepting only the highest quality papers, and this is certainly evident in the upper urinary tract section of this edition, where two studies demonstrate what it takes to be published in the journal nowadays. In the first article, Kerri Barnes and colleagues from University…

Has anybody ever tried to record one of your consultations? Yesterday, a patient of mine took his smartphone out of his pocket, placed it on my desk and said: “you don’t mind if I record this consultation do you doctor?” I tried not to look too surprised, gave my consent, and proceeded to go through the treatment options to him for his early prostate cancer.  As I did so, perhaps a little more thoroughly and carefully than usual, I vaguely wondered whether the recording would be admissible…

Kluth et al. [1] have conducted a large retrospective study from several institutions in North America and Europe to assess the impact of blood transfusion on oncological outcomes after radical cystectomy (RC) for bladder cancer. The hypothesis for a negative impact of transfusion on oncological outcomes stems from the observation that renal allograft survival is prolonged after pre-transplant blood transfusions because of its immuno-modulatory effects [2]. This finding prompted Gantt [3] to…

Dr Marnique Basto (@DrMarniqueB)      Delegates of #USANZ14 received a sunny welcome at this year’s 67th annual scientific meeting in Brisbane, affectionately coined by Aussies as ‘Bris-vegas’ attributed to a love of Elvis and the city’s growing live music scene. The reins were passed from Professor Damien Bolton and A/Professor Nathan Lawrentschuk (@lawrentschuk) who convened last year’s ASM in Melbourne to Greg Malone (@DrGregJMal) and Eric Chung. @BJUIjournal Editor-in-chief…