Unintentional and sexual abuse-related pediatric female genital trauma: a multiinstitutional study of free-standing pediatric hospitals in the United States.

Objective: To evaluate a large national database of free-standing pediatric institutions to define the characteristics of patients who have both unintentional and sexual abuse-related pediatric female genital trauma (PFGT), to describe variation in practice across institutions and between trauma and nontrauma hospitals, and to determine factors associated with diagnostic evaluation and surgical repair of PGFT.

Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort using the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) discharge database with information from 41 freestanding children's hospitals. We identified inpatient and emergency department visits for female patients younger than 18 years of age with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision diagnosis codes for nonobstetric PFGT discharged in the 5-year period between January 1, 2003 and December 31, 2007.

Characterization of erectile function in elastin haploinsufficicent mice.

Introduction: Elastin fibers confer passive recoil to many tissues including the lung, skin, and arteries. In the penis, elastin is present in sinusoids, arterioles, and in the tunica albuginea. Although decreased penile elastin has been reported in men with erectile dysfunction, the exact role of elastin in physiologic processes integral to erection remains speculative.

Pediatric robot-assisted laparoscopic varicocelectomy.

Purpose: We determined the feasibility and safety of robot-assisted laparoscopic varicocelectomy (RALV) in the pediatric population compared with laparoscopic varicocelectomy (LV).

Patients And Methods: We identified all patients who underwent RALV since April of 2006. For each case, we selected two age-matched controls who underwent LV and compared the groups in terms of operative times, postoperative complications, and hospital charges.

"Open" minimally invasive surgery in pediatric urology.

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) offers alternative operative approaches to standard open surgical techniques. However, MIS has been defined primarily as substituting laparoendoscopic alternatives for the traditional open surgical approach. The concept of MIS methodology may also be applied to open surgery in an effort to decrease incision size, potentially reduce morbidity and enhance convalescence, without compromising 'gold standard' outcomes.

Review type 2 diabetes mellitus and erectile dysfunction.

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a major risk factor for the development of erectile dysfunction (ED). Although most diabetic ED cases are in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), the majority of basic science studies examining mechanisms of diabetic ED have been conducted in animal models of type 1 diabetes.

Aim: Recently, however, clinical and laboratory-based studies have uncovered some key underlying factors of T2DM-associated ED, which we have compiled in this review of T2DM ED.