Tag Archive for: John Blandy Prize

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BJUI journal prizes

Every year the BJUI awards three prizes to trainee urologists who have played a significant role in contributing to the work published in the journal. The prizes go towards travel costs enabling the trainees to visit international conferences. In 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic leading to the cancellation of many of these conferences, the usual prize-giving ceremonies have not taken place so here we are introducing you to the prize winners and their work. We hope they will be able to spend their prize money in 2021.

Global prize

This is awarded to authors who are trainees based anywhere in the world other than the Americas and Europe. Usually presented at the USANZ annual meeting. In 2020 the prize was awarded to Sho Uehara for his work on artificial intelligence in prostate cancer diagnosis.

Sho Uehara MD Ph.D Tokyo, Japan
Assistant professor, Department of Urology
Tokyo Medical and Dental University

Email: [email protected]

 

Sho Uehara received a Ph.D. from the graduate school of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2018.  He is now working as a urologist and an assistant professor at the university hospital. His research interests include prostate cancer diagnostics, and utilization of machine learning for them.

Membership of academic societies:

JUA (The Japanese Urological Association), EAU (European Association of Urology) and AUA (American Urological Association)

 

Coffey-Krane prize

The Coffey-Krane prize is awarded to an author who is a trainee based in The Americas. Normally presented at the AUA annual conference. Dr Nathan Wong received this year’s award for his work on using machine learning to predict biochemical cancer recurrence following prostatectomy.

Dr Nathan Wong
Associate Professor
Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College

Dr Nathan Wong is an assistant professor and associate program director in the Department of Urology at Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College. He specializes in urologic oncology and robotics surgery. His main interests are in technology, clinical trials and surgical education. He completed a Society of Urologic Oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and urology residency at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada. 

 

John Blandy prize

This prize is for authors who are trainees based in Europe. Presented at the BAUS annual conference; the winner gives a presentation. This year the prize went to Nicholas Raison for his work on a RCT on cognitive training in robotic surgery.

Nicholas Raison is Vattikuti fellow at the MRC Centre for Transplantation and Mucosal Cell Biology, King’s College London and a Urology Specialist Registrar in the London Deanery.

BJUI Annual Awards

Trainees who have a paper accepted for publication in the BJU International Journal are eligible for one of the following three BJUI Journal Prizes, which are awarded annually, based on the authors’ geographical location when they conducted the research.

The BJUI Global prize

This is awarded to authors who are trainees based anywhere in the world other than the Americas and Europe. The prize is presented at the USANZ annual meeting. In 2019 the BJUI Global prize was presented to Dr Amila Siriwardana from St Vincent’s Prostate Cancer Centre in Sydney, Australia for his article: Initial multicentre experience of 68gallium‐PSMA PET/CT guided robot‐assisted salvage lymphadenectomy: acceptable safety profile but oncological benefit appears limited.

The Coffey-Krane prize

The Coffey-Krane prize is awarded to authors who are trainees based in The Americas and it is presented at the AUA annual conference, which was held this year in Chicago. There were two winners this year: Jeffrey J. Tosoian and Meera R. Chappidi from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, USA for their work on: Prognostic utility of biopsy‐derived cell cycle progression score in patients with National Comprehensive Cancer Network low‐risk prostate cancer undergoing radical prostatectomy: implications for treatment guidance.

The John Blandy prize

The John Blandy prize is awarded to authors who are trainees based in Europe. The prize is presented at the BAUS annual conference and the winner gives a presentation. The 2019 award was given to Isabel Rauscher from the Technical University of Munich in Germany, who gave a talk at the conference in Glasgow in June. Her article is entitled: Value of 111In‐prostate‐specific membrane antigen (PSMA)‐radioguided surgery for salvage lymphadenectomy in recurrent prostate cancer: correlation with histopathology and clinical follow‐up.

BJUI Vattikuti Foundation Robotics prize

This prize is a one-off prize awarded for the best robotics paper recently published in the BJU International Journal. The prize is sponsored by the Vattikuti Foundation and voted for by an independent panel. The research was carried out by a team from the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea on: Does robot‐assisted radical prostatectomy benefit patients with prostate cancer and bone oligometastases?

BAUS 2018 Highlights Day One

Day one at BAUS gets started with society meetings and the John Blandy Prize and Lecture delivered by Editor Prokar Dasgupta.  The winner was from Pisano et al from Turin, Italy on “The role of re-transurethral resection in the management of high risk NMIBC (PMID 26469362).

But I had to miss this event as I was having my first patient encounter with the NHS.  I have 4 days of severe pain in my left foot after a lot of walking/running around as a tourist on a Baltic Sea cruise.  I went to the nearby NHS walk in clinic—there for an hour and saw the nurse practitioner and left with new scripts for NSAIDs, pain, etc.  And no bill?  Not in the USA!

So now that I can walk (sort of—but only with my running shoes—looks great with a suit) I made it to the teaching course on quality improvement (QI).  I am interested in the topic as I am a Quality Officer for Urology at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  One of our new directives has been to help with fellows organizing a new mandatory “quality improvement” initiative as part of their training.  From the course, I learned that the UK has similar programs but also similar challenges in implementation and standardization.  In the UK, it sounds like medical students are being taught quality improvement in the curriculum.  But if you are like me and finished school > 20 years ago, you likely missed this content.  A consensus opinion was that educational materials on quality improvement science will be created and hopefully will land on the BJUI Knowledge website.  This will help trainees but also trainers catch up on terminology, goals, and how to coach trainees on project development.

The next strong consensus was that quality improvement projects be listed on a website—likely BAUS—so that they could be indexed and searched.  Similar to clinicaltrials.gov or the PROSPERO website that catalog clinical trials and meta-analyses, respectively, the BAUS site could be searchable for projects that were successful as well as those that failed for some reason (perhaps with lessons learned).  Indexing could help with project selection as some QI ideas are unique to urology versus all specialties, and QI projects may emphasize different practice environments such as clinic, operating theatre, or diagnostic departments.

Overall, QI is an emerging field and we are struggling with the same barriers on both sides of the Atlantic.  Principle questions include 1) how to differentiate a clinical study from QI, 2) the role of statistics, evidence-based medicine principles, and ethics committees in QI, 3) how QI should be taught in medical school and post graduate programs, and 4) how QI projects can be published.  On the latter point the Journal of Clinical Urology has expressed interest in publishing QI projects.

The course was directed by Mr. James Green from Barts Health, and also taught by Prof. Nick Sevdalis.  Congrats to both on a job well done.  From my perspective, this field will continue to grow and for some young academic minded urologists will develop into a legitimate academic niche to go along with established pathways such as laboratory investigations, health services research, and surgical education.

Figure: My favorite slide—so may sources of inspiration for a Quality Improvement Projects

John W. Davis, Associate Editor.

 

Highlights from #BAUS15

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#BAUS15 started to gain momentum from as early as the 26th June 2014 and by the time we entered the Manchester Central Convention Complex well over 100 tweets had been made. Of course it wasn’t just Twitter that started early with a group of keen urologists cycling 210 miles to conference in order to raise money for The Urology Foundation.

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Monday 15th June 2015

By the time the cyclists arrived conference was well under way with the andrology, FNUU and academic section meetings taking place on Monday morning:

  • The BJU International Prize for the Best Academic Paper was awarded to Richard Bryant from the University of Oxford for his work on epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition changes found within the extraprostatic extension component of locally invasive prostate cancers.
  • Donna Daly from the University of Sheffield received the BJUI John Blandy prize for her work on Botox, demonstrating reductions in afferent bladder signaling and urothelial ATP release.

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  • Professor Reisman’s talk on ‘Porn, Paint and Piercing’ as expected drew in the crowds and due to a staggering 44% complication rate with genital piercings it is important for us to try to manage these without necessarily removing the offending article as this will only serve to prevent those in need from seeking medical attention.
  • With the worsening worldwide catastrophe of antibiotic resistance, the cycling of antibiotics for prevention of recurrent UTIs is no longer recommended. Instead, Tharani Nitkunan provided convincing evidence for the use of probiotics and D-Mannose.

The afternoon was dominated by the joint oncology and academic session with Professor Noel Clarke presenting the current data from the STAMPEDE trial. Zolendronic acid conferred no survival benefit over hormones alone and consequently has been removed from the trial (stampede 1). However, Docetaxal plus hormones has shown benefit, demonstrated significantly in M1 patients with disease-free survival of 65 months vs. 43 months on hormones alone (Hazard ratio 0.73) (stampede 2). This means that the control arm of M1 patients who are fit for chemotherapy will now need to be started on this treatment as the trial continues to recruit in enzalutamide, abiraterone and metformin arms.

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The evening was rounded off with the annual BAUS football tournament won this year by team Manchester (obviously a rigged competition!), whilst some donned the

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lycra and set out for a competition at the National Cycle Centre. For those of us not quite so energetic, it was fantastic to catch up with old friends at the welcome drinks reception.

 

Tuesday 16th June 2015

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Tuesday kicked off bright and early with Professor John Kelly presenting results from the BOXIT clinical trial, which has shown some benefit over standard treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, but with significant cardiovascular toxicity.

The new NICE bladder cancer guidelines were presented with concerns voiced by Professor Marek Babjuk over discharging low-risk bladder cancer at 12 months given a quoted 30-50% five-year recurrence risk. Accurate risk stratification, it would seem, is going to be key.

The President’s address followed along with the presentation of the St. Peter’s medal for notable contribution to the advancement of urology, which was presented to Pat Malone from Southampton General Hospital. Other medal winners included Adrian Joyce who received the BAUS Gold Medal, and the St. Paul’s medal went to Mark Soloway.

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A plethora of other sessions ensued but with the help of the new ‘native’ BAUS app my programme was already conveniently arranged in advance:

  •     ‘Heartsink Conditions’ included pelvic and testicular pain and a fascinating talk by Dr Gareth Greenslade highlighted the importance of early and motivational referral to pain management services once no cause has been established and our treatments have been exhausted. The patient’s recovery will only start once we have said no to further tests: ‘Fix the thinking’
  • Poster sessions are now presented as ‘e-posters’, abolishing the need to fiddle with those little pieces of Velcro and allowing for an interactive review of the posters.

 

Photo 22-06-2015 22 36 07Pravisha Ravindra from Nottingham demonstrated that compliance with periodic imaging of patients with asymptomatic small renal calculi (n=147) in primary care is poor, and indeed, these patients may be better managed with symptomatic imaging and re-referral as no patients required intervention based on radiograph changes alone.

Archana Fernando from Guy’s presented a prospective study demonstrating the value of CTPET in the diagnosis of malignancy in  patients with retroperitoneal fibrosis (n=35), as well as demonstrating that those with positive PET are twice as likely to respond to steroids.

 

Wednesday 17th June 2015

Another new addition to the programme this year was the Section of Endourology ‘as live surgery’ sessions. This was extremely well received and allowed delegates to benefit from observing operating sessions from experts in the field whilst removing the stressful environment and potential for risk to patient associated with live surgery. This also meant that the surgeon was present in the room to answer questions and talk through various steps of the operation allowing for a truly interactive session.
Wednesday saw multiple international speakers dominating the Exchange Auditorium:

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  • The BJU International guest lecture was given by Professor Hendrik Van Poppel: a heartfelt presentation describing what he believes to be the superiority of surgery over radiotherapy for high-risk localised prostate cancer.
  • The Urology Foundation presented the Research Scholar Medal to Ashwin Sachdeva from Freeman Hospital, Newcastle for his work on the ‘Role of mitochondrial DNA mutations in prostate carcinogenesis’. This was followed by an inspiring guest lecture by Inderbir Gill on ‘Robotic Urologic Oncology: the best is yet to come’ with the tag line ‘the only thing that should be open in 2015 is our minds’
  • Robotic Surgery in UK Urology: Clinical & Commissioning Priorities was a real highlight in the programme with talks from Jim Adshead and Professor Jens-Uwe Stolzenburg focussing on the fact that only 40% of T1a tumours in the UK were treated with partial (as opposed to radical) nephrectomy, and that the robot really is the ‘game-changer’ for this procedure. Inderbir Gill again took to the stage to stress that all current randomised trials into open vs. robotic cystectomy have used extracorporeal reconstruction and so do not reflect the true benefits of the robotic procedure as the dominant driver of complications is in the open reconstruction.

These lectures were heard by James Palmer, Clinical Director of Specialised Commissioning for NHS England who then discussed difficulties in making decisions to provide new technologies, controlling roll out and removing them if they show no benefit. Clinical commissioning policies are currently being drafted for robotic surgery in kidney and bladder cancer. This led to a lively debate with Professor Alan McNeill having the last word as he pointed out that what urologists spend on the robot to potentially cure cancer is a drop in the ocean compared with what the oncologists spend to palliate!

 

Thursday 18th June 2015

The BJU International session on evidence-based urology highlighted the need for high-quality evidence, especially in convincing commissioners to spend in a cash-strapped NHS. Professor Philipp Dahm presented a recent review in the Journal of Urology indicated that the quality of systematic reviews in four major urological journals was sub-standard. Assistant Professor Alessandro Volpe then reviewed the current evidence behind partial nephrectomy and different approaches to this procedure.

Another fantastic technology, which BAUS adopted this year, was the BOD-POD which allowed delegates to catch-up on sessions in the two main auditoria that they may have missed due to perhaps being in one of the 21 well designed teaching courses that were available this year. Many of these will soon be live on the BAUS website for members to view.

The IBUS and BAUS joint session included a lecture from Manoj Monga from The Cleveland Clinic, which led to the question being posed on Twitter: ‘Are you a duster or a basketer?’The audience was also advised to always stent a patient after using an access sheath unless the patient was pre-stented.

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The updates session is always valuable especially for those studying for the FRCS (Urol) exam with far too many headlines to completely cover:

  • Endourology: The SUSPEND trial published earlier this year was a large multi-centre RCT that showed no difference in terms of rates of spontaneous passage of ureteric stone, time to stone passage or analgesic use between placebo, tamsulosin and nifedipine. There was a hot debate on this: should we be waiting for the meta-analysis or should a trial of this size and design be enough to change practice?
  • Oncology-Prostate: The Klotz et al., paper showed active surveillance can avoid over treatment, with 98% prostate cancer survival at 10 years.
  • Oncology-Kidney: Ellimah Mensah’s team from Imperial College London (presented at BAUS earlier in the week) demonstrated that over a 14-year period there were a higher number of cardiovascular-related admissions to hospital in patients who have had T1 renal tumours resected than the general population, but no difference between those who have had partial or radical nephrectomy.
  • Oncology-Bladder: Arends’s team presented at EAU in March on the favourable results of hyperthermic mitomycin C vs. BCG in the treatment of intermediate- and high-risk bladder cancer.
  • Female and BPH: The BESIDE study has demonstrated increased efficacy with combination solifenacin and mirabegron.
  • Andrology: Currently recruiting in the UK is the MASTER RCT to evaluate synthetic sling vs. artificial sphincter in men with post-prostatectomy urinary incontinence.

 

Overall BAUS yet again put on a varied and enjoyable meeting. The atmosphere was fantastic and the organisers should be proud of the new additions in terms of allowing delegates to engage with new technologies, making for a memorable week. See you all in Liverpool!

 

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Rebecca Tregunna, Urological Trainee, West Midlands Deanery @rebeccatregunna

 

Dominic Hodgson, Consultant Urologist, Portsmouth @hodgson_dominic

 

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