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Leaving a Lasting Impression on Your Patients

Grand Rounds in Urology Contributing Editor Neil H. Baum, MD, Professor of Urology at Tulane Medical School, gives tips on how urologists can leave a positive lasting impression on their patients. He explains that making a favorable last impression is important since it encourages patients to share their experience. Dr. Baum then gives some suggestions on how a urologist can leave a positive impression, including calling key patients at home to answer any lingering questions patients may have and to remind them of future appointments or procedures. He defines key patients as those who have been recently discharged, those who have recently had an outpatient procedure, those who have received a negative result from recent diagnostics, or new patients. Dr. Baum notes that the doctor should ideally be the one to call the patient and provides some suggestions for scheduling calls and alerting patients ahead of time that the doctor will be calling in order to avoid playing phone tag. He lists the advantages of calling, explaining that it continues the connection between the patient and the practice, reduces the number of calls from patients, improves a practice’s online reputation, and creates “raving fans.” Dr. Baum concludes that last impressions are just as important as first impressions for a practice’s reputation.

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2020 AUA Microhematuria Guidelines Update

Jennifer M. Taylor, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Urology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, begins by citing the original American Urological Association (AUA) Microhematuria Guideline from 2012, pointing out that the guideline was created in response to a major public health problem. She outlines the benefits and drawbacks of the original guideline, including the benefit that the AUA guideline would miss the fewest number of cancers versus other guidelines. The drawbacks included not being cost-effective, having low-yield and low specificity, being too aggressive for women and for those at low risk of malignancy, and having low rates of adherence. Dr. Taylor concludes that the 2012 guideline’s adverse impacts on patients were too great, citing discomfort, infections, false positives, and radiation exposure. Dr. Taylor then turns her discussion to the Microhematuria: AUA/Society of Urodynamics, Female Pelvic Medicine & Urogenital Reconstruction (SUFU) Guideline 2020, which took a risk-based, patient-centered approach, aiming to minimize harm and the waste involved in over-evaluation for low-risk patients, thereby improving specificity in those patients while maintaining specificity for those at higher risk for disease. Goals of the 2020 guideline included improving adherence with a more judicious set of guidelines and harmonizing the guidelines to achieve clarity among diverse stakeholders. The systematic review took place between January 2010 and December 2019 and included an evidence base of five systematic reviews and 91 primary literature studies. Dr. Taylor explains that the 2020 guideline maintains that microhematuria is defined as a urinalysis (UA) showing at least three red blood cells per high-powered field (≥ 3RBC/HPF). Dr. Taylor expounds upon the updated guidelines in terms of initial evaluation, diagnosis, and follow-up before confronting the gender gap in bladder cancer diagnosis. She cites a study concluding that treatment without further evaluation in the year prior to a bladder cancer diagnosis occurred 19 percent of the time in men versus 47 percent of the time in women. Further, there were three or more treatments for urinary tract infection (UTI) prior to evaluation by a urologist in 3.8 percent of men versus 15.8 percent of women. Dr. Taylor calls this significant and calls for continued advocacy for fuller symptom evaluation. Dr. Taylor then breaks down risk stratification, emphasizing that risk is highly correlated with known risk factors for urothelial cancer and doctors can tailor the intensity of the patient evaluation based on those risk factors. She presents and explains low-, medium-, and high-risk patient characteristics and evaluation recommendations. Dr. Taylor summarizes the takeaways from the 2020 guideline. For low-risk patients, practitioners should employ shared decision-making with their patients, either opting to repeat the UA or conduct a cystoscopy and renal ultrasound; for intermediate-risk patients, practitioners should conduct a cystoscopy and renal ultrasound; and for high-risk patients, the guideline recommends a cystoscopy with axial imaging. Dr. Taylor emphasizes the importance of the cystoscopy in these evaluations before displaying a summary one-page outline of the 2020 guideline and algorithm.

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Urologic Perspective on the Clinical Utility of and Emerging Data on Micro-Ultrasound

In part 2 of a 2-part series on micro-ultrasound for prostate cancer imaging, Rafael Sanchez-Salas, MD, Associate Professor of Urology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, reviews data on micro-ultrasound (microUS) from a urologic perspective, comparing it to MRI in order to evaluate its clinical utility. He explains that there is more and more data suggesting microUS’s superiority to multiparametric (mp)MRI in screening and the benefits of using it in addition to MRI in clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa). Dr. Sanchez-Salas discusses microUS’s comparable detection rates to mpMRI as shown by a balanced forest plot with ratios ranging between .94 and 1.05 and its ability to help 23% of patients avoid biopsy with no cases of missed csPCa. He then looks at a study testing a proposed protocol for assessing risk based on microUS which showed a much higher sensitivity than mpMRI in microUS of 87.5% vs. 55-61% but lower specificity of 80% vs. 87-88%. Dr. Sanchez-Salas states that there are still several questions to be answered about microUS’s utility on its own, during active surveillance, for focal therapy, and for bladder cancer staging. He concludes with a discussion of the OPTIMUM trial, which will conclude in spring of 2023 and which is meant to provide level-1 evidence regarding the use of microUS in prostate biopsy.

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Radiologic Perspective on the Clinical Utility of and Emerging Data on Micro-Ultrasound

In part 1 of a 2-part series on micro-ultrasound for prostate cancer imaging, Sangeet Ghai, MD, FRCR, Deputy Chief of Research and Associate Professor in the Joint Department of Medical Imaging (JDMI) at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, considers micro-ultrasound and data evaluating its ability to produce better results than conventional imaging from a radiologic perspective. He explains that micro-ultrasound is a system that functions on a higher frequency than conventional options and uses the PRIMUS protocol, a prostate risk identification system similar to PIRADS. Dr. Ghai states that micro-ultrasound has been shown to increase detection rates by 12%, have sensitivity as high as 91%, and find cancer that was missed by MRI. He also discusses data comparing micro-ultrasound to other imaging modalities that shows that micro-ultrasound can find 1.05 times as much grade group 2 and higher disease as multiparametric MRI and has a 14.6% higher detection rate than robotic elastic fusion. Dr. Ghai concludes by reviewing data looking at micro-ultrasound visibility of MRI lesions and real-time targeting showing that 90% of MRI lesions were visible on micro-ultrasound and that 61% of those harbored clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) on targeted biopsy, that 43% of MRI lesions were retrospectively visible on TRUS and that 58% of those harbored csPCa, and that 24% of micro-ultrasound lesions with normal MRI were positive for csPCa.

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