Appropriately selected cases of renal angiomyolipoma can be managed by active surveillance. For those patients requiring treatment nephron sparing approaches, including partial nephrectomy and selective arterial embolization, are preferred options. For those with tuberous sclerosis complex mTOR inhibitors may represent a viable approach to control tumor burden while conserving renal parenchyma.
Junior and senior clinicians showed a dramatic adoption of endoscopic techniques. Treatment of upper tract calculi is an evolving field and provider specific attributes affect how these stones are treated.
Introduction and objectives
To determine how robotic prostatectomy affects practice patterns of urologists, we examined the case volume characteristics among certifying urologists for the surgical treatment of prostate cancer. We hypothesized that the utilization of open and robotic prostatectomy as well as lymph node dissection changed dynamically over the last 10 years.
Methods
Six month case log data of certifying urologists from 2003 to 2013 were obtained for the American Board of Urology. Cases were identified using CPT codes for open radical prostatectomy (ORP) and laparosopic or robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) with a corresponding diagnosis of prostate cancer as defined by ICD-9 code 185.0.
Results obtained
A total of 6,563 urologists submitted case logs, of which 68% (4470/6563) reported performing at least one radical prostatectomy (RP), totaling 46,030 RPs logged. There was a 376% increase in the performance of RALP over the study period with robotic volume increasing from 22% of all RP in 2003 to 85% in 2013. Among surgeons performing ORP, the median number performed was 2; of surgeons who performed RALP, the median number performed was 8 (p < 0.001). 39% of surgeons logging ORP performed two or fewer RP while 19% of surgeons who performed RALP performed 2 or less RP (p < 0.001). The highest volume robotic surgeons (top 10% surgical volume) performed 41% of all RALP with the highest performing robotic surgeon recording 658 prostatectomies over 6 months. Oncologists represented 4.1% of all surgeons performing RP and performed 15.1% of all RP (p < 0.001); general urologists performed the majority of RP (57.8%). When performed open, there was no influence of surgeon specialty on the performance of lymph node dissection (LND); if performed robotically, oncologists were significantly more likely to perform LND compared to general surgeons (47% vs. 25.9% respectively, p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Robotic prostatectomies are performed five-times more commonly than open prostatectomy and represent 85% of all RP performed by board-certified urologists in 2013. Compared to RALP, ORP are significantly more likely to be performed by lower volume surgeons. Oncologists perform a higher relative percentage of RPs and are significantly more likely to perform LND if performed robotically when compared to general urologists.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.