Blogs@BJUI

Last night, I was delighted, along with other members of the BJUI Editorial Board, to attend a reception for The Urology Foundation at Number 10 Downing Street, hosted by the UK's "First Lady" Samantha Cameron. The reception was attended by many eminent urologists as well as a number of well-known personalities. The primary aim of the reception was to raise awareness for the Foundation and its work and all of us at the BJUI are happy to help in that aim. Prokar Dasgupta, Editor-in-chief       The…

I am blogging again my friends. Blogging is freedom in the 21st Century; the modern equivalent of standing on a soapbox in Speakers’ Corner in London. Still, only old people write formal blogs now, young people microblog. They use Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, or Instagram. Blogging is no more modern than an open radical prostatectomy is sexy; actually its old-fashioned and beneath me. Still, I like it. And more importantly, it gives me an easy outpost to write about urology in an informal manner. So…

“It’s a gold mine!” said someone to me once about the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER). Most of you are probably aware of the existence of this large observational population-based cohort of the National Cancer Institute in the United States. The quality of the SEER’s data collection and the immense pool of information on patient socio-demographics, morphology, therapeutic treatment and long-term follow-up for vital status (and more) are nothing short of extraordinary. Officially,…

The Urologist cursed with contempt at his finger in the air, discussing with me his practice of prostatic massage, “I’ve had to learn to use my left pointer, the right one developed osteoarthritis”. A moment of silence, then laughter! From medical school I observed the different ‘phenotype’ of consultant between the specialties and noted the way certain personality types appeared attracted to particular fields. Whilst plastic surgeons displayed a dichotomy of perfectionism and relaxed…

Here’s my technique for anaesthetising patients for robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy and I’d be interested to hear any thoughts, comments and ideas. Pre-op. I try to fast the patients for as short a time as possible and also include pre-operative carbohydrate loading. This is in line with Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Guidelines for major bowel surgery and has been shown to reduce the negative nitrogen balance that occurs following major surgery. I use 200ml cartons…

My first suggestion to my wife was that I enter Pop Idol with my modified, radiation-bashing rendition of American Pie (chorus "bye bye brachytherapy seeds"). She quickly retorted "DIVORCE! YOU CANT SING!" I begrudgingly agreed. Then Britain’s Got Talent came along and I saw an overweight Greek father and son duo, Stavros Flatley, prance around the stage bare-chested, dancing to some traditional Greek music and I thought “YES! There is hope!" I put on Riverdance, grabbed my then three-year-old…

In 1948 BF Skinner put a pigeon in a box.  Unlike most of Skinner’s birds, this one did not have to learn a behavior, such as pecking a lever, to receive an edible reward. Food was automatically dispensed at fixed time intervals without fail, the pigeon simply had to wait. The fascinating development from this experiment was that after some few hours in the box the bird was performing an elaborate routine of behaviors; turns, head movements, foot raises, all presumably in an effort to bring about…

Deep vein thromboses (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) are rare, but potentially devastating, complications of major pelvic surgery. We have performed more than 1000 robot assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) procedures in Central London (Lessons learned from 1000 RARP operations BJUI 2013;111(1):9-10.) and to date encountered just a couple of DVTs, as well as a single, non-fatal instance of PE. However, in the case of one of us (RK), a close relative passed away as a result of a PE 10 days…

Howard Stern proclaimed himself the King of all Media; I have proclaimed myself the King of the Urology twitter world.  There is no basis for my claim.  I certainly do not have the most followers nor do I have regal heritage. If you repeat things often enough they simply become true on the web - so I'm happy to be the king What is true is that I was the first academic urologist to take to the twitterverse in a persistent, snarky, timely, and - at times- academic manner. I coached the uro-twitterati…