Clinical Use of Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite for Clinical Practice to Assess Patient Reported Prostate Cancer Quality of Life Following Robot-Assisted Radical Prostatectomy.

Purpose: EPIC-CP (Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite for Clinical Practice) is a short questionnaire that comprehensively measures patient reported health related quality of life at the point of care. We evaluated the feasibility of using EPIC-CP in the routine clinical care of patients with prostate cancer without research infrastructure. We compared longitudinal patient and practitioner reported prostate cancer outcomes.

How to Quantify Recovery After Laparoscopic Adrenalectomy: An Assessment of Patient-reported Health-related Quality of Life.

Introduction And Objective: Minimally invasive approaches to adrenal surgery were adopted in an attempt to reduce surgical morbidity. Despite the widespread use, few studies objectively evaluate health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients undergoing laparoscopic adrenalectomy (LA). We assessed patients' health status and recovery after LA with the use of validated questionnaires.

Aspirin and clopidogrel during robotic partial nephrectomy, is it safe?

Introduction: Continuation of antiplatelet medications through major urologic surgery may increase the risk of intraoperative and postoperative bleeding complications. However, withdrawal of antiplatelet therapy may place some patients at high risk of serious cardiovascular or cerebrovascular complications. We assess the feasibility of performing robotic partial nephrectomy (RPN) in patients maintained on aspirin or dual antiplatelet therapy with aspirin and clopidogrel.

Optimizing prostate cancer detection during biopsy by standardizing the amount of tissue examined per core.

Objective: To investigate the effect on cancer detection by varying the number of cores taken for prostate biopsy according to the size of the prostate.

Patients And Methods: A retrospective review of a prospectively registered prostate biopsy database identified 3040 consecutive patients undergoing prostate biopsy at a Veterans Administration Hospital between 1994 and 2008. Of 2224 biopsies, 681 (31%) were found to have cancer and 1540 (69%) had negative biopsies.

Copy number alterations in pancreatic cancer identify recurrent PAK4 amplification.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal of all cancers. The median survival is six months and less than 5% of those diagnosed survive five years. Recurrent genetic deletions and amplifications in 72 pancreatic adenocarcinomas, the largest sample set analyzed to date for pancreatic cancer, were defined using comparative genomic hybridization The recurrent genetic alterations identified target a number of previously well-characterized genes, as well as regions that contain possible new oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes.