Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Cancer care is currently experiencing rapid development in novel therapeutics, with an associated rise in treatment costs. These changes not only create a critical challenge for therapeutic decision-making but also highlight the need to prioritize therapies of high clinical and economic value. Health technology assessment methodology is a novel approach that could help guide value-based decision-making.
GeoBioMed, a new multidisciplinary approach, combines geology, biology, urology and microscopy to discover unorthodox treatments. Results indicate that calcium oxalate kidney stones undergo previously unforeseen cycles of repeated crystallization, dissolution, fracturing and faulting. GeoBioMed challenges clinical paradigms for in vivo stone formation and treatment as well as biomineralization in natural and engineered environments.
The future of urology holds promising new technologies but also a challenging increase in urological care needs. To translate emerging technologies and medical advances into use and accommodate the growing demand for urological services, we need strong collaboration with other health-care professionals within urology, other medical specialties and the community that surrounds our profession.
As a field that embraces technology, urology has evolved quickly in the past 15 years and is likely to change at an even greater pace in the next 15. Several approaches and initiatives have the potential to improve patient care, in particular the use of telemedicine, improvements in data analytics and growth of physician collaboratives.
Cell lines are valuable tools for developing treatments to minimize disparities in prostate cancer outcomes. Nevertheless, limitations in their application, primarily from the inadequate use of ethnically diverse cell lines, continue to hinder the advance of drug leads that would equally benefit men from both African and European ancestry.
The Internet can be a valuable resource for patients, but it is also a minefield of misinformation and hidden bias. The Urology Care Foundation is attempting to mitigate this flood of inaccurate information by providing high-quality online resources for clinicians, patients and caregivers.
Current clinical issues in testicular germ cell tumour management include limited sensitivity and specificity of conventional biomarkers and, therefore, reliance on serial CT imaging in follow-up monitoring, as well as poor ability to risk stratify patients. Circulating microRNAs are likely to help overcome these challenges and, importantly, could offer cost savings to health-care systems.
Diagnosis of urinary tract infection (UTI) includes anatomical distinctions because the severity of infection and treatment decisions depend on the infected organ; however, bacterial prostatitis is usually absent from discussions regarding UTI. By considering bacterial prostatitis a UTI, we can increase understanding of the pathogenesis and immune response in the prostate to develop improved therapeutics.
