The barrier function of the glycosaminoglycan (GAG) layer of the urothelium was identified by Parsons in 1975, and intravesical therapies to treat chronic inflammatory conditions of the bladder were developed soon after. However, the active role of the urothelium in...
Botulinum toxin is the first biological toxin to be licensed for use in treating human disease and since its first therapeutic use in the early 1980s for strabismus has become widely used in the fields of ophthalmology, cosmetic surgery, migraine...
In this series of articles I am going to show you some of the exhibits contained in the Museum of Urology, hosted on the BAUS website (www.baus.org.uk). Eponyms are frowned upon in modern medical teaching but, as a medical historian,...
Figure 1 is an app that enables the sharing of medical images to aid learning. In essence, Figure 1 is an Instagram for healthcare. It was launched in 2013 and now connects a network of up to one million healthcare...
We live in an interconnected world that is constantly striving for a share of our attention. Smartphones, tablets and wearable computers are always by our sides, with procrastination and distractions only ever one touch away. A survey by TecMark in...
For this month’s Digital Review I explored the hype surrounding Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) from Open AI. The free version is still available at https://chat.openai.com/chat (ChatGPT 3.5) and was used in this article. At the time of writing this...
In this series of articles I am going to show you some of the exhibits contained in the Museum of Urology, hosted on the BAUS website (www.baus.org.uk). I’ve always found the derivation of names fascinating. Anatomy lessons were made so...
Background Pelvic floor imaging is an important part of both gastrointestinal and functional urology / urogynaecological departments. Symptoms such as obstructive defecation, incontinence and sphincter complex disorders have a significant impact on patient lifestyle and physical / mental well-being [1,2]....
The use of guide wires has become a core skill utilised by urologists, especially within the field of endourology. The authors take us through the development of the guide wire and their current use in urology. The history The first...
Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the sixth most common solid organ cancer in the UK. In 2018, there were 403,262 people diagnosed worldwide with the disease (2.2% of all cancer cases), and it accounted for 175,098 deaths in total (1.8%...
Nearly a third of men miss out on lifesaving treatments for prostate cancer – raising to more than half in worst-hit areas Prostate cancer can be cured if found early, but 31% of men diagnosed with aggressive but curable prostate...
The rising incidence of childhood cancer coupled with increasing survivorship means there is a growing population of childhood cancer survivors with unmet health needs. In the UK around 1 in 500 children and young people are survivors of childhood cancer....