Skin Cancer & You

An estimated quarter of a million 11- to 17-year-olds in England are being put at increased risk of developing malignant melanoma by using sunbeds, warn researchers.

AMA President Dr Andrew Pesce, speech to 'Australia's Health' The Congress on National Health Reform, Parliament House of Victoria, 30 November 2009 Practical Immediate Health Reform My thanks to Global Access Partners and the Australian Centre for Health Research for the invitation to be part of this important Congress. You can't escape the term 'health reform' these days - it has become a signature tune of the Rudd Government. Everybody has a view on health reform - what it means, what it should look like, and when and how it should happen...

A small US study involving toddlers diagnosed with autism, some as as young as 18 months old, showed that intensive early intervention delivered by trained specialists and parents was very effective and improved IQ, social interaction and language ability. The five year study was based at the University of Washington (UW) Seattle and was led by Dr Geraldine Dawson, who used to be professor of psychology and director of UW's Autism Center, and is now chief science officer of Autism Speaks, an awareness, fundraising, science, and advocacy organization...

UroToday.com - The diverse embryological origins of the scrotal contents, including the genital swelling, the retroperitoneum, and the abdominal wall, create an environment where unusual pathologies can and do appear. Our review of less commonly clinically encountered scrotal pathologies is intended to broaden the differential diagnosis the practicing urologist considers when presented with a scrotal mass. This review includes both benign and malignant pathologies, some representing possible systemic diseases...

UroToday.com - The best management of patients with small renal masses is the nephron sparing approach. This has been well shown to improve patients' long-term renal function while providing equivalent oncologic management of their disease compared to open radical surgery. Laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN) is a technically challenging surgical procedure and as such has been slow to gain widespread application for small, localized renal tumors...

UroToday.com - The real aetiology of stone formation is still unclear to the common clinician. Researchers are groping in the dark trying to recognise the reversible and irreversible risk for future stone formation in an individual. Positive family history has been implicated as a main factor in the aetiology. The genetic code of an individual cannot however be changed as yet, so the relevance of identifying positive family history in a stone patient is only to advise the patient to take better precautions in prophylaxis...

UroToday.com - Radiotherapy, given in 20-25 fractions over 4-5 weeks, is usually the second choice for the treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer, behind radical cystectomy. Only patients unfit or unwilling to undergo surgery are referred for radiotherapy. An advantage of radiotherapy is that the healthy part of the bladder can be saved in case of a uni-focal lesion. A challenge of radiotherapy is the large day-to-day variation of the position of the tumour and large margins are required to compensate for this uncertainty...

UroToday.com - The purpose of the clinical study was to evaluate whether quantitative parameters of tumor vascularisation assessed by DCE-MRI enable the determination of the morphologic grading of renal cell carcinomas non-invasively. Our prospective study included 21 patients suspected of having renal cell carcinoma with a mean age of 61.5 years. 8 patients had to be excluded prior to the study for having another histology or an insufficient MR-examination...

UroToday.com - Silodosin is a newly developed α1A-adrenoceptor(AR) selective antagonist. It has been reported that blockade of α1A-AR was effective in the relief of bladder outlet obstruction, while the blockade of the α1D-AR was believed to alleviate storage symptoms due to detrusor overactivety (DO). When urodynamic studies were undertaken, however, it was found that silodosin was effective for both storage and voiding symptoms. In this study, silodosin alleviated DO and bladder outlet obstruction determined by a pressure flow study...

UroToday.com - Urology residents are involved with performing transrectal-ultrasound (TRUS) guided prostate biopsies during their training. Satisfactory accomplishment of this skill is a competency necessary for urologic practice. A group from the Glickman Institute at the Cleveland Clinic evaluated whether with proper training and supervision, resident urologists are able to perform TRUS biopsy with comparable proficiency to staff urologists. The study was prospectively performed on 865 patients between 2006 and 2008...