Treatment of Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms and Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
P re f a c e
Kevin T. McVary, MD, FACS Charles Welliver, MD
Editors
If there is any disease or surgical procedure that
epitomizes urology to the public, then it is certainly
the surgical treatment of benign prostatic disease.
How many of us became “ureteral buds” upon
entering our first operating room and witnessing
the controlled chaos of wet floors, streams of
blood on surgical gowns, and bombastic voices
that (hopefully) culminated in a catheter-free and
grateful older gentleman?
That very real vision was benign prostatic hyper-
plasia (BPH) treatment not so long ago. Our field
and the options for our patients have expanded
greatly in the past 20 years, in part to the efforts
of many of the authors found in this series. Our pa-
tients can be managed medically, minimally inva-
sively, and more traditionally with approaches
tailored to their own phenotypes—a movement to-
ward personalized medicine. Novel diagnostic
tools, new treatments and methods for treatment
delivery, modern surgical techniques, and a better
understanding of the psychological and biological
forces that drive lower urinary tract symptoms
(LUTS) are bound to improve outcomes for our
patients.
All of medicine is under pressure from
outside forces. The treatment of LUTS/BPH is
particularly under such intense scrutiny because
medical treatments are common and costly, while
the surgeries are numerous and potentially dupli-
cative. These negative influences on this field
are offset by the profound good our efforts obtain.
Ask yourself as a surgeon, is there any more grate-
ful patient than a previously catheter-dependent or
home-bound man who gets effective treatment
and now rejoins the world feeling significantly
better? A numbers-needed-to-treat analysis of
Urol Clin N Am 43 (2016) xv
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ucl.2016.06.001
0094-0143/16/$ – see front matter Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.
N 5 1! These appreciative patients, the increasing
diverse choices for medications, the rapidly
evolving technology, and the means to measure
our impact on patients makes the field of LUTS/
BPH boundlessly rewarding.
The contributors of the articles herein are not
only recognized international leaders in the treat-
ment of LUTS/BPH but also dedicated global in-
structors that put forth dedicated efforts to make
this issue a reality. We are indebted to their sup-
port and efforts. We also express our appreciation
to Dr Samir S. Taneja for supporting this endeavor
and to Kerry Holland, Remy Van Wyk, Alison
Swety, and Susan Showalter at Elsevier for their
guidance throughout the process. Our hope is
that the readers find this to be an engaging and
informative issue.
In closing, we would like to thank our mentors,
families, and patients. We could not be the physi-
cians and people that we are without the impact all
of these people have had on us.
Kevin T. McVary, MD, FACS
Southern Illinois University
School of Medicine
301 North 8th Street
Springfield, IL 62702, USA
Charles Welliver, MD
Albany Medical College
23 Hackett Boulevard
Albany, NY 12208, USA
urologic.theclinics.com
E-mail addresses:
kmcvary@siumed.edu (K.T. McVary)
cwelliver@communitycare.com (C. Welliver)