CEM17: Young urologists show best work in well-attended contest

Eight young urologists from across Central Europe showed their best work and innovative insights in various topics ranging from penile cancer, new training models to donor nephrectomy, during the Young Urologists Competition held in the second day of the 17th Central European Meeting (CEM17).

The participants examined a wide variety of topics to earn the approval of both jury and audience in the well-attended session.

“The aim of this session is to highlight innovations in our practice and discover new ways of approaches or examine fresh perspectives,” said session chair Prof. Jens Sonksen (DK) who led the session together with co-chairs Professors Marko Babjuk (CZ) and Michiel Sedelaar (NL).

Eight contestants coming from Romania, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia have seven minutes to present a compact report and another three minutes to answer questions from the jury members and audience.

Alexandre Dick (RO) discussed the incidence and management of lichen sclerosus, and highlighted it’s proper diagnosis to prevent disease progression to lethal penile cancer. He examined medical, surgical and oncologic approaches including two and one-stage urethroplasty, its benefits and advantages. “There is an underestimated incidence reporting of lichen sclerosus due to the lack of centralized database and the use of different names. At the same there is both underestimation by doctors and patients which results to delayed referral and suboptimal treatment,” he said.

D. Hebenstreit (AT) presented her team’s study on long-term outcome of pediatric renal transplantation in boys with posterior urethral valves (PUV). She reported good outcome results in PUV patients compared with control group after renal transplants. “Cystostomy is a favourable pre-transplant intervention and bladder dysfunction does not have a major impact on graft survival,” she said in her concluding remarks.

Coatian I. Pezelj tackled a cost -benefit analysis of the introduction of mpMRI guided biopsies in Croatia and discussed the use of the PIRADS system and how it impacts on biopsy procedures such as TRUS biopsy. “Initially, prostate mpMRI represents a significant cost in prostate cancer diagnostics. But benefit is attained by avoiding unnecessary biopsies,” he said while noting that further follow-up is necessary particularly in patients with PIRADS score.

Both session chairs and the audience were intrigued with the innovative use of cheaper materials reported by D.P. Sarlós (HU) who reported his new partial nephrectomy training model using silicon materials. In do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion, Sarlos recreated a tumor kidney model made up of silicon which can be used by young doctors to practice their laparoscopic skills at home. The total costs of the DIY model amounted to only about 80 euro cents.

“Surgical simulation tools can easily be created and our model is realistic, easy to make, cheap and feasible,” Sarlos said.

M.Skrzypczy (PL) examined male incontinence and compared the various surgical tools used in the management of male incontinence. He said further long-term studies are needed to assess the current procedures and head-to-head RTCs are necessary for evaluation. Meanwhile, J. Stejskal (CZ) discussed the role of mpMRI/TRUS fusion in the current diagnostic algorithm of prostate cancer. He noted issues such as the use of mpMRI as triage before biopsy indications, using mpMRI in active surveillance in place of re-biopsy, and the option of performing targeted biopsies while avoiding systematic biopsies.

J. Švihra Jr. (SK) took up health-related quality of life in patients with prostate cancer using a questionnaire-based survey, and described not only the challenges in translating the questionnaire to another language but also the objective evaluation that follows. The session ended with the presentation of M. Taskovska (SI) which described her team’s work in laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy. She described the process from recruitment down to the surgical approaches and provided details on the surgical challenges such as vascular control, kidney extraction and managing donor complications.

“Laparoscopic living donor nephrectomy has comparable results with open approach with regards graft function, operation time, and post-operative creatinine level,” she said, while adding that it has several benefits for the donor such as less blood loss, better cosmetic results, shorter hospital stay, and shorter work leave.

The winner of the competition will be announced at the concluding session, together with the announcement of the winners of the six best submitted posters. The two-day annual CEM17 will end today in Plzen, Czech Republic.