Arjun Nathan is an ST1 in Urology in North London and NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow with the Royal College of Surgeons. He is also the BURST Treasurer and committee member.
Mr Chuanyu Gao is a Core Surgical Trainee in KSS Deanery. He graduated from UCL Medical School and obtained his iBSc in Surgical Sciences before completing his Academic Foundation Years in East of England Foundation School. Chuanyu first became involved with BURST on the MIMIC Study as an international site coordinator and has been part of the BURST committee ever since.
How time flies! It seems like only yesterday that I was appointed the 10th Editor‐in‐Chief of a 90‐year old major surgical journal. We assembled a dynamic team with a clear, modern vision and strategy. As we say goodbye, it is time to reflect fondly on our achievements.
Of the many ways to measure this, one is the number of downloads of BJUI articles from our publisher Wiley Online Library. This has increased steadily every year, reaching 3 million downloads in 2019 alone. In addition to this we are regarded as pioneers of web‐based publishing and social media. The BJUI itself and its editorial team have a large, devoted following especially on Twitter. Our infographics, podcasts, picture quizzes, polls and videos were deliberately designed to grab an audience with limited time and short attention spans. The BJUI blogs have often been read more than the articles themselves, bringing immediacy, wider engagement and sensible debate. The most visited blog on the death of Nobel Laureate Tagore from prostatic enlargement was read nearly 110 000 times.
Our impact factor has steadily increased since 2012, reaching the highest in its history and is as close to 5 as it ever has been. This has been achieved by decreasing the acceptance rate to 10% without any form of manipulation. This means that the BJUI papers are now “returnable” to any research excellence exercise of which many exist worldwide. As a clinician–scientist I could not accept anything else in academic circles. The BJUI is the only surgical journal to be rated in the Altmetric top 50 reaching a score of 1469 [1], compared to an average Altmetric score of 3. It is a testament to the hard work of our team above and beyond the impact factor. I suspect that with more fully open access journals such as the BJUI Compass , driven by Plan S, the importance of the impact factor as it now stands, may gradually diminish over time. We have also led on bringing innovation such as Artificial Intelligence [2] into our journal and making science accessible to a clinical audience through our “science made simple” section.
While many of our papers come from the UK, USA and Australia, we have also published the best articles from Uganda, China, Japan, Iran, Korea, India, Pakistan and Peru. We are and remain a global journal, associated with 10 international societies. The NICE guidelines have been well cited over the last 3 years [3] as have the papers in our Trials section and the ever‐popular Guideline of Guidelines [4]. We have managed to co‐publish a number of high‐quality Cochrane reviews including the only one with a maximum AMSTAR score of 11 out of 11 comparing laparoscopic, robotic and open radical prostatectomy [5].
In this issue of the BJUI , we have published the protocol and curriculum development of the SIMULATE study – the world’s first and only multi‐centre randomised controlled trial of surgical simulation. What started as a BAUS study, expanded worldwide and recruited 1400 cases to see if simulation made better surgeons and improved patient outcomes [6].
The BJUI also brought innovative design from the fashion industry into academic publishing through the Glass magazine. As a parting gift, I therefore thought it fitting to publish a photograph of the courtyard of King’s College London where the SIMULATE trial first started. It was taken on a sunny day on my iPhone with no one in sight because of the pandemic. We have seen the viral crisis as an opportunity to learn from other nations and published a critical review to guide urological care for our colleagues, residents and patients [7].
I take this opportunity to thank a loyal group of friends at the BJUI Editorial offices, our trustees, the Associate and Consulting Editors, our wider editorial team of authors and reviewers and our publisher Wiley. I am proud to hand over the BJUI to my friend Freddie Hamdy in the best state of academic health and creativity.
Every year the BJUI awards three prizes to trainee urologists who have played a significant role in contributing to the work published in the journal. The prizes go towards travel costs enabling the trainees to visit international conferences. In 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic leading to the cancellation of many of these conferences, the usual prize-giving ceremonies have not taken place so here we are introducing you to the prize winners and their work. We hope they will be able to spend their prize money in 2021.
This is awarded to authors who are trainees based anywhere in the world other than the Americas and Europe. Usually presented at the USANZ annual meeting. In 2020 the prize was awarded to Sho Uehara for his work on artificial intelligence in prostate cancer diagnosis.
Email: [email protected]
Sho Uehara received a Ph.D. from the graduate school of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2018. He is now working as a urologist and an assistant professor at the university hospital. His research interests include prostate cancer diagnostics, and utilization of machine learning for them.
Membership of academic societies:
JUA (The Japanese Urological Association), EAU (European Association of Urology) and AUA (American Urological Association)
The Coffey-Krane prize is awarded to an author who is a trainee based in The Americas. Normally presented at the AUA annual conference. Dr Nathan Wong received this year’s award for his work on using machine learning to predict biochemical cancer recurrence following prostatectomy.
Dr Nathan Wong is an assistant professor and associate program director in the Department of Urology at Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College. He specializes in urologic oncology and robotics surgery. His main interests are in technology, clinical trials and surgical education. He completed a Society of Urologic Oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and urology residency at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada.
This prize is for authors who are trainees based in Europe. Presented at the BAUS annual conference; the winner gives a presentation. This year the prize went to Nicholas Raison for his work on a RCT on cognitive training in robotic surgery.
Nicholas Raison is Vattikuti fellow at the MRC Centre for Transplantation and Mucosal Cell Biology, King’s College London and a Urology Specialist Registrar in the London Deanery.
This is the final Article of the Week selected by the outgoing Editor-in-Chief 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.
If you only have time to read one article this week, we recommend this one.
Enrico Checcucci*, Sabrina De Cillis*, Angela Pecoraro*, Dario Peretti*, Gabriele Volpi*, Daniele Amparore*, Federico Piramide*, Alberto Piana*, Matteo Manfredi*, Cristian Fiori*, Riccardo Autorino†, Prokar Dasgupta‡, Francesco Porpiglia* and on behalf of the Uro-technology and SoMe Working Group of the Young Academic Urologists Working Party of the European Association of Urology
*Department of Urology, San Luigi Gonzaga Hospital, University of Turin, Turin, Italy, †Division of Urology, VCU Health, Richmond, VA, USA, and ‡King’s College London, Guy’s Hospital, London, UK
To summarize the clinical experiences with single‐port (SP) robot‐assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) reported in the literature and to describe the peri‐operative and short‐term outcomes of this procedure.
A systematic review of the literature was performed in December 2019 using Medline (via PubMed), Embase (via Ovid), Cochrane databases, Scopus and Web of Science (PROSPERO registry number 164129). All studies that reported intra‐ and peri‐operative data on SP‐RARP were included. Cadaveric series and perineal or partial prostatectomy series were excluded.
The pooled mean operating time, estimated blood loss, length of hospital stay and catheterization time were 190.55 min, 198.4 mL, 1.86 days and 8.21 days, respectively. The pooled mean number of lymph nodes removed was 8.33, and the pooled rate of positive surgical margins was 33%. The pooled minor complication rate was 15%. Only one urinary leakage and one major complication (transient ischaemic attack) were recorded. Regarding functional outcomes, pooled continence and potency rates at 12 weeks were 55% and 42%, respectively.
The present analysis confirms that SP‐RARP is safe and feasible. This novel robotic platform resulted in similar intra‐operative and peri‐operative outcomes to those obtained with the standard multiport da Vinci system. The advantages of single incision can be translated into a preservation of the patient’s body image and self‐esteem and cosmesis, which have a great impact on a patient’s quality of life.
Every week, the Editor-in-Chief selects an 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.
There is also an editorial written by a prominent member of the urological community. Please use the comment buttons if you would like to join the conversation.
If you only have time to read one article this week, we recommend this one.
Javier Romero-Otero*†‡, Borja García-Gómez*†, Lucía García-González*‡, Esther García-Rojo*, Pablo Abad-López*, Juan Justo-Quintas†, José Duarte-Ojeda*‡ and Alfredo Rodríguez-Antolín*
*Urology Department, Grupo de Investigación Salud Integral del Varón imas12, Hospital Universitario 12 Octubre, †Hospital Universitario HM Montepríncipe, and ‡Hospital Universitario La Luz, Madrid, Spain
To assess the perioperative outcomes of holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) in real‐life practice and investigate the factors influencing the safety and effectiveness of the technique.
Critical analysis of patients with benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) treated with HoLEP over 10 years of routine practice in three hospitals. Analysed variables included: preoperative characteristics (prostate size, active antiplatelet/anticoagulant therapy, blood parameters. prostate‐specific antigen (PSA) level, maximum urinary flow rate [Qmax], and International Prostate Symptom Score [IPSS]), intraoperative variables (operation time, concomitant removal of bladder calculi, and complications), early postoperative outcomes (change in blood parameters, catheterisation time, and hospital stay), and 12‐month follow‐up outcomes (change in IPSS, PSA level, and Qmax).
The analysis included 963 patients, aged 48–91 years, with a mean (range) prostate size of 91 (35–247) mL. The mean (sd ) operation time was 77 (29) min, and the hospital stay and catheterisation time were 4 (2) and 1.3 (2) days, respectively. In all, 56 patients (5.6%) required concomitant removal of bladder calculi and 36 (3.7%) were converted to open prostatectomy or transurethral resection of the prostate due to intraoperative complications. Patients had a significant decrease in haemoglobin and haematocrit, but no differences were seen between patients with and without anticoagulant/antiplatelet therapy and those with prostates ≥ and <100 mL. The concomitant removal of bladder calculi and having a prostate ≥100 mL resulted in a longer operation time, but did not influence the safety and effectiveness outcomes.
HoLEP is suitable for real‐life patients with BPH, irrespective of the presence of active treatment with anticoagulant/antiplatelet, bladder lithiasis or a prostate ≥100 mL.
