A/Prof Nathan Lawrentschuk – USANZ 2017
A/Prof Nathan Lawrentschuk, USANZ 2017 convener, host of Talking Urology & Urological Surgeon & Urologic Oncologist. Joseph discusses with Nathan highlights of USANZ 2017 and the emerging themes.Talking Urology podcast transcript
USANZ 2017 Interviews – Nathan Lawrentschuk
This is Talking Urology.
Joseph Ischia: And now, Nathan, it’s time to put you on the other side of the microphone as the convener of this year’s meeting. What was some of your highlights? Or what do you see as some of the emerging themes to come out of the talks?
A/Prof Nathan Lawrentschuk: Look, it’s been a fantastic meeting and my hats off to Shomik Sengupta, my scientific convener, for really helping pull this all together. Look, there have been some, apart from having wonderful international and national guests showcase the best of Urology at present, I think there was some emerging themes to come out of this year’s meeting. In particular, the questioning of the role of MRI, its place prebiopsy and in active surveillance strategies, knowing your own local rates of positivity is very important. Again, piece of my PET/CT being done increasingly for primary staging and re-staging has really taken off and again, we just don’t have the histopathology data to back a lot of that up; so still applies right for studies. I think moving into oligometastatic disease again, it was good to have both the Radiation Oncology perspective and, of course, your own perspective on this. I think other things emerging, certainly we learn to be a bit smarter about perioperative management, perhaps using less fluids in larger cases and thinking about the length of DVT prophylaxis. I think in terms of other areas that we’ve looked at quite closely, we’ve seen emergence of new thoughts about Peyronie’s disease, whether the injectables and the aggressive surgery were required. The role of botulinum toxin seems to be ever expanding. With stone surgery, the comeback of PCNL with the mini-perc has been interesting as well as the development of better and smaller instruments for ureteroscopy and, of course, the single-use ureteroscopes. We saw also the ever present and emerging role of cytoreductive nephrectomy coming about with the new tyrosine kinase inhibitors; and I suppose finally, from my perspective, to see the reiteration of the need to be more aggressive to have a success in bladder cancer. And, you know, personally for me on the back of the launch of bladdercancer.org.au. and now new patient booklet, I think bladder cancer was brought to the front and center of this meeting and showing us again, we’re doing a pretty poor job with muscle invasive disease. But, you know, we have at least now got some good local patient resources available at bladdercancer.org.au. So, I’m really looking forward to Dan Moon and Declan Murphy in Melbourne come 2018.
Joseph Ischia: Fantastic night. It’s been an absolutely magnificent program. I know you’ve worked tirelessly, you and Shomik, and I congratulate you.
A/Prof Nathan Lawrentschuk: Thanks, Joe.