Laparoscopic radical prostatectomy--the experience of the German Laparoscopic Working Group.

Purpose: To present the current status of laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (LRP) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with respect to transferability, learning curve, and outcome.

Material And Methods: The data of 5824 patients who underwent LRP in 18 centers by 50 urologists from March 1999 to August 2004 were analyzed retrospectively. Three centers performed more than 500, and six more than 250 cases.

Different antigen unmasking techniques lead to significant differences in immunohistochemical staining of Ki-67 (Mib-1) in renal cell carcinomas.

For immunohistochemistry on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded specimens adequate pretreatment of the sections to achieve an unmasking of antigenic domains before staining the specimens is necessary. In this study, we compared the effect of microwave and autoclave heating on the expression of the cell proliferation marker Ki-67 (Mib-1) in renal cell carcinomas. A total of 177 formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tumor specimens of locally confined renal cell carcinomas with clear cell morphology were investigated.

Nobody needs "relative tumour sizes" to compare tumour growth curves.

Tumour growth curve experiments play an important role in experimental oncology and established methods exist for their unbiased interpretation. However, many authors till introduce systemic biases to their data by using the so-called "relative tumour size" transformation, inspite of wide awarance about the limitations of this latter method. With this communication and by using a fictive exaggeration of the problems connected with the application of this transformation we would like to appeal to both authors and reviewers likewise to ban this potential source of misinterpretation from the oncological literature.

A tool for self-dilatation of distal urethral strictures.

We propose the use of a catheter stopper with a smooth tip as a tool for the dilatation of distal urethral strictures. This allows for self-dilatation by the patient himself or by non-professionals involved in daily care at regular intervals. The method was successfully used in 2 patients.