EAU-CAU tackles controversial urology topics
The Joint EAU-Confederacion Americana de Urologia (CAU) meeting tackled a range of so-called ‘hot’ urology issues with topics ranging from female stress urinary incontinence, imaging in prostate cancer, surgical techniques in bladder and kidney tumours to challenges in conducting randomized trials.
EAU Sec. General Chris Chapple spoke on managing female Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) and gave an overview of the medical and surgical options. He highlighted the need for surgeons to carefully look into the complications of surgical interventions.
“Regarding the future, we can expect future surgical procedures to be characterized by less material load such as light or ultra-light mesh materials with improved elasticity and larger pores,” Chapple said in a full joint session.
J. Angelo Cuesta discussed epigenetic and new markets for personalized medicine and among his conclusions are that in the future methylation signatures will be useful in the follow-up and prediction of response to different types of therapies. “Hypermethylation profiles can also predict prognosis in patients with cancer, but most of the potential markers identified have not been validated yet in a clinical setting , prospectively,” he said.
Jean Palou spoke on managing complications in robot assisted radical cystectomy. “Robot-assisted radical cystectomy (RARC) is not bad and is probably better than open. For surgeons, RARC is also easier to learn than laparoscopic procedures since the surgeon is also more relaxed than in open and laparoscopic procedures,” added Palou.
Jens Rassweiller spoke on the benefits of the Avicenna Roboflex and said that it improves ergonomy and provides more dexterity than the human hand. “Besides offering fine movements the Roboflex is steerable at the console,” he said as he noted that the procedure may decrease costs by extending the lifetime of a flexible scope and reduces the number of second sessions.
“I believe that this is the future of flexible ureterorenoscopy,” said Rassweiler referring to the Avicenna Roboflex.
Mark Emberton discussed the issue of conducting randomized trials in prostate cancer research and spoke on the challenges often encountered by researchers.
“We need a cheaper and more scalable method of randomization in surgery. And the cohort embedded RcT has many desirable attributes. In its ultimate form, it is a partnership between patient and healthcare personnel and designed to accumulate knowledge efficiently,” said Emberton in his concluding remarks.
The session was chaired by Prof. Hein van Poppel (BE) who spoke on partial nephrectomy, and Professors Davila Barrios (VE) and Villavencencio Mavrich (ES).