Latest Clinical & Research News
Specialty: Urology
While traditional tumor boards are common at most academic medical centers, Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) has taken its 10-year-old tumor board to the next level by integrating molecular pathology into their discussions.
The Division of Urology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital provides expert, individualized care for a range of urological conditions. Because many urological treatments have similar clinical outcomes, division surgeons are gathering data called patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). They plan to use PROMs to better identify the nuances of treatment outcomes and determine how these outcomes affect quality of life for individual patients.
Based on clinical expertise and patient volume, the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) is one of the top programs in the country for the treatment of genitourinary cancers. The integrated center draws on the expertise of a multidisciplinary team of specialists to provide exceptional patient care.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brigham’s Division of Urology has harnessed telehealth technology to ensure continuation of care for patients and improve patient outcomes.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed the management of patients with advanced kidney cancer. However, these therapies only work for a subset of patients with advanced disease and can be associated with substantial side effects. As a result, researchers are focused on new therapeutic combinations to boost the effectiveness of current immune therapies in renal cancer, including in patient populations with early-stage disease that is likely to recur.
Ureteroscopy is one of the most common procedures performed by urologists. Yet little is known about what optimizes the procedure’s success, especially in terms of how the urologist holds the ureteroscope and which hand and arm movements are most effective.
Communication breakdowns and poor teamwork are major contributors to preventable patient harm during surgery. To combat these and other threats to patient safety, surgical teams at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have long been provided with training that simulates crises in the operating room (OR). The proactive nature of these simulations is something that the Brigham’s Division of Urology finds invaluable.
Physicians have a good sense of the symptoms and causes of overactive bladder, and clear guidelines exist for diagnosis. Thanks to advertising for pharmaceuticals and other products, even many members of the general public are aware of this condition and know that treatments are available.
Although surgery and radiation provide good disease control for localized prostate cancer, developing long-lasting approaches for treating metastatic disease has been challenging because resistance to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) frequently develops.
Members of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital community celebrated in October upon learning that William G. Kaelin Jr., MD, a senior physician-scientist at the Brigham, had won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.