Latest Updates

Neurogenic Bladder Dysfunction: Surgical Treatment

    • Surgery for neurogenic bladder aims to protect the upper urinary tract and optimize continence.
    • Major factors to consider are the injury level, gender, habitus, dexterity, and cognitive functions.
    • Surgical options for storage and emptying failure are discussed, including indication, technique, and complications.
    • New surgical technology and regenerative medicine are mentioned together.

Seronegative Spondyloarthritis: Diagnosis And Management

    • The combined use of T1-weighted MRI with a water-sensitive MRI sequence significantly enhances early detection of spondyloarthritis, identifies patients responsive to therapeutic intervention with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFIs), and constitutes a key prognostic factor for structural progression.
    • Treatment of patients with TNFI early in the disease course when radiographic sacroiliitis is not yet evident is highly effective, especially in patients with an elevated C-reactive protein and/or features of inflammation on MRI.
    • Treatment targeting interleukin-17 is an effective new treatment option for patients with spondyloarthritis, especially in the setting of concomitant psoriasis.  
    • Imaging recommendations that allow for precision in diagnosis.

Differentiated Thyroid Cancer

    • Use of molecular testing of non-diagnostic thyroid nodule FNAs to increase the ability to obtain a diagnosis, decrease the need for repeated biopsies, and improve patient care
    • Refining the indications for total or complete thyroidectomy
    • Decreasing the use of radioactive iodine ablation based on risk stratification
    • Indications for lymphadenectomy approach in selected patients
    • Improving molecular targeted agents for iodine-refractory metastatic disease with improvements shown in progression free survival
    • Targeted therapy for recurrent, unresectable, iodine-refractory lesions

Professionalism in Surgery

    • The central feature of medical ethics is the primacy of the patient’s interests.
    • The ethical obligations of a for-profit corporation include maximizing profit and growth.
    • The rise of entrepreneurialism and the growing corporatization of medicine also challenge the traditions of virtue-based medical care. When these processes are allowed to dominate medicine, health care becomes a commodity.
    • The different obligations of business and medical ethics call the appropriateness of applying industrial models to provision of health care into question. It is no less than each of our professional duties to address these tensions where they exist.

Allergic Response

    • Antihistamines to block the binding of histamine at target sites, aspirin and NSAIDs to block the synthesis of prostaglandin D2, and leukotriene antagonists blocking it’s downstream effects
    • Allergen immunotherapy to induce long-lasting clinical tolerance in sensitized patients in an antigen-specific approach
    • Monoclonal antibodies against IL-5 (mepolizumab, reslizumab), and IL-5 receptor (benralizumab) for treatment of hypereosinphilia and proposed for allergy diseases

Acute Testicular Torsion Management

    • Orchiopexy without transparenchymal suturing is a new surgical approach for the treatment of acute testicular torsion.
    • There is a recent focus on the role of ischemia-reperfusion injury in acute testicular torsion and medications that may help prevent damage caused by ischemia-reperfusion injury.
    • Fasciotomy with tunica vaginalis flap is a new surgical technique aimed at preventing damage from ischemia reperfusion injury.
    • There is a new focus on immediate reconstruction with testicular prosthetic at the time of orchiectomy for testicular torsion. 

Treatment of Diabetic Foot Infections

    • Novel treatment modalities include Negative Pressure Wound Therapy, bioengineered skin substitutes and placental derived constructs
    • Advances in microsurgical techniques including perforator flaps and understanding angiosomes
    • Improvements in management of vascular disease including advances in diagnostic methods and new non-invasive stenting techniques

The Diabetic Surgical Patient

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