Articles of the week

We read with interest the article by Sun et al. [1] in this issue of the BJU International. We were pleased to see another research group interested in this important aspect of the management of patients with lymph-node-positive non-metastatic RCC. The question of the benefits of lymphadenectomy in such patients could not be answered by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer randomized trial [2], as only 4% of clinically node-negative patients had micrometastatic disease. Given…

Extent of lymphadenectomy does not improve the survival of patients with renal cell carcinoma and nodal metastases: biases associated with the handling of missing data Maxine Sun*, Quoc-Dien Trinh*‡, Marco Bianchi*¶, Jens Hansen*††, Firas Abdollah¶, Zhe Tian*, Shahrokh F. Shariat§, Francesco Montorsi¶, Paul Perrotte† and Pierre I. Karakiewicz*† *Cancer Prognostics and Health Outcomes Unit, †Department of Urology, University of Montreal Health Center, Montreal, Canada,…

Every week the Editor-in-Chief selects the Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post.  In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by prominent members of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment…

There is an excellent study from Uganda in this issue of the BJUI [1]. It looks at the rate of healing of men undergoing prophylactic circumcision. Some had HIV; others not. What they termed ‘complete wound healing’ was an intact scar without a scab, sutures or a sinus – effectively a ‘sealed’ wound. There are several useful data therein: all men had healed by 6 weeks; the median being 4 weeks. HIV status did not appear to delay wound healing, even with low CD4 counts. the…

Every week the Editor-in-Chief selects the Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post. In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by prominent members of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment…

Multiple studies have shown that only one in three or four men with a raised PSA level prove to have prostate cancer and many men suffer potentially life-threatening complications from transrectal prostate biopsy. There is an urgent need for better risk stratification of men with elevated PSA levels. Any such test should have a high negative predicative value (NPV; small number of significant cancers missed) but also a high positive predictive value (PPV; i.e. the yield would be high and there would…

Every week the Editor-in-Chief selects the Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post. In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by prominent members of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment…

Urologists are familiar with the plethora of comorbidities affecting patients with bladder cancer. Many are smoking-related, such as respiratory disease, ischaemic heart disease and peripheral vascular disease. Other conditions are associated with an ageing, increasingly obese population. Rieken et al. [1], present intriguing observations suggesting an association between diabetes mellitus (DM), its treatment and the prognosis of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). In a retrospective,…

Association of diabetes mellitus and metformin use with oncological outcomes of patients with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer Malte Rieken1,3, Evanguelos Xylinas1,4, Luis Kluth1,5, Joseph J. Crivelli1, James Chrystal1, Talia Faison1, Yair Lotan6, Pierre I. Karakiewicz7, Harun Fajkovic10, Marek Babjuk8, Alexandra Kautzky-Willer10, Alexander Bachmann3, Douglas S. Scherr1 and Shahrokh F. Shariat1,2,10 1Department of Urology, 2Weill Cornell Medical College, New York-Presbyterian Hospital,…