ICS 2017 SOAs Confirmed!!

The ICS Scientific Committee are pleased to confirm the state of the art lectures for ICS 2017 in Florence. These are:

Websites, apps and social media – Are patients ahead of the profession?

The use of the Internet as the first source of health information is increasing. Patients are feeling more empowered and more involved in their own health and health decision making. Social media has brought new possibilities to discuss health and medical problems but can also lead to patient´s being misinformed. The global mobile boom has resulted in a huge number of health apps, but few of them are scientifically evaluated. Online health information and medical apps have the potential to increase access to treatment and self-management programmes, also for pelvic floor disorders. There is a great demand for eHealth solutions from patients and caregivers but what do we know about the use, the effectiveness and the costs? Are we ready?

BPO surgery: when, how, how much? Andrea Tubaro

The surgical management of BPH reflects the diversity of our society with early and late adoption from both patients and surgeons. The scarce body of evidence available in this area only allows to manage the extremes. Patients with mild symptoms rarely benefit from intervention while patients with a constrictive type of obstruction can easily lead to bladder decompensation; from a teleological standpoint, acute urinary retention can be considered protective of detrusor function. Different approaches can be used to relieve obstruction and patients sometimes report misleading communication from health care providers. Provided the one-size-fits-all approach is wrong, we need different techniques to cope with different prostate sizes and diverse patient comorbidities, mastering most of the available techniques is required for a free choice and an informed consent. “More is better” probably holds true for durability in this type of surgery although no one evidence is available and the priority remains to choose the surgical technique for the individual patient and shape it according to his needs.
The learning curve for BPH surgery was known to be long and no shortcuts have been created yet.

More information about the programme will follow shortly but there will be workshops, round tables and live surgery sessions.

The 2017 Abstract Centre will open 1 March.

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Enrico Finazzi Agrò
Urologist

Laurence Stewart
Urologist