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Open rectal cancer resection is associated with a higher rate of sexual dysfunction, but not bladder dysfunction, compared with laparoscopic surgery. Laparoscopic rectal cancer surgery offers a significant advantage with regard to preservation of postoperative sexual function and constitutes a true advance in rectal cancer surgery compared with the open technique. The proposed advantages can be attributed to improvement in visibility by the magnification feature of laparoscopic surgery.

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The aim of this study was to determine the average penile length of a group of healthy, young Turkish men, and to investigate the relationship between penile length and somatometric parameters in the same group. The flaccid and stretched length and circumference of the penis was measured in a group of 2276 physically normal, young men. The correlation between penile length and weight, height and body mass index (BMI) of the participants was determined by Pearson's analysis. The mean age of the participants was 21.1±3.1 (18 --39) years. The mean flaccid, fully stretched and circumferential length of the participants' penises were 8.95±1.04, 13.98±1.58 and 8.89±0.86 cm, respectively. There was a significant relationship between all of these variables (Po0.01). Although weak positive correlations were found between the mean circumference length and BMI, there were no correlations between both the flaccid and stretched lengths and BMI. The penile length must be known to be able to determine the abnormal penile sizes and to make convenient decisions in the counseling and/or treatment of people with short penis concerns. Our study provides mean penile lengths in a large sample of healthy, young Turkish men, and the penile dimensions were found to be weakly correlated with somatometric parameters.

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The objective of this study was to describe and present the initial results of a computer-based system that tracks ureteral stents and automatically sends a reminder through a short message service (SMS) to both the patient's and the urologist's mobile phones Using an integrated stent register program (SRP) and a stent extraction reminder program (SERP) with an electronic patient record program (EPRP) located within our hospital's computer network. In this system, the demographic data of all of the patients are recorded into the password-protected EPRP. After a stent is inserted, the surgeon enters the details of the operation into the EPRP. The SRP automatically asks the user to define the "optimal stent life (OSL)". The SERP checks the recorded patients daily and sends an SMS reminder to staff and patient when the OSL is reached. The SERP continues to send reminders via the SMS until stent is removed. We analyzed the success of the SMS recall system. A total of 186 patients received stents over an 11-month period. The patients in group-2 (n = 108) were recalled by the SERP, and the remainder of the patients (n = 78, group-1) were not included in the project. The mean delay from the designated OSL to the time of stent removal was 307 ± 118.6 (72-1,344) and 14.6 ± 2.06 (5-36) h in groups 1 and 2, respectively (p < 0.0001). Our initial results showed that the SRP and SERP prevent stent removal from being forgotten, thus preventing related medical and legal problems.

Aim of study was to present costs of forgotten ureteral stents extraction so as to distract attentions of the urologists on this issue. Medical files of 27 accessible patients who referred to our clinics between 2001 and 2010 because of forgotten ureteral stent were retrospectively analyzed. The indwelling time of double-j stents (DJS) was calculated from the time of its insertion. Costs related to radiological investigations, all invasive, and noninvasive interventions, duration of hospital stay, and medical treatments used were calculated. These estimations were based on 2010 prices determined by Turkey Ministry of Health. Mean age of the patients was 31.2 (8-86 years) years. Mean indwelling time of ureteral DJSs was 36.7 months (14-84 months). Seventy-one [extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL), n = 26; invasive/noninvasive interventions, n = 32] procedures were applied for 27 patients. In six patients without incrustation, after a single session of ESWL DJSs could be removed cystoscopically. A various combination of a multimodal therapy was used for other 21 patients. Total financial burden of 27 patients was US $ 34,300. Cost of treatment was estimated to be 6.9-fold (1.8- to 21-fold) higher than an average timely stent extraction. Financial burden of the treatments increased in parallel with the duration of the stent retention (p = 0.001). Management of forgotten DJS is time consuming, difficult, complicated, risky, and costly. Therefore; financial burden, increased labour loss, and impaired quality of life brought by the application of these modalities must not be forgotten.