Bücher der Reihe Clinical Practice in Urology

Urologists have, for example, developed strong links with microbiol ogists over mutual problems of infection in the urinary tract, urolog ists have been involved in the development of modern management of renal disease and especially renal failure, indeed even before the subject of nephrology had been defined.

Cancer of the bladder has a bad reputation: the combination of urinary problems and malignancy gives just cause for continuing concern. Early bladder cancer is amenable to several therapeutic approaches, but we have still to determine the best approach.

Such an important subject as urinary diversion is unlikely to remain unchanged and unchallenged for long. later, urinary diversion was extended to help those patients with neurological problems of bladder function and with malignant diseases of the lower urinary tract.

Chemotherapy for malignant disease has brought about many rapid and often spectacular improvements in the survival rate of some groups of patients.

Any book with the words percutaneous and interventional is immediately identified as one that brings to its readers a distillation of a number of new and exciting techniques. Percutaneous is not exactly a new word but it has come to take on an entirely new meaning in recent years.

Carcinoma of the prostate increasingly dominates the attention of urologists for both scientific and clinical reasons. Carcinoma of the prostate continues to have its highest incidence in the western world, and the difference in comparison with the incidence in the Far East appears to be real and not masked by diagnostic or other factors.

A further volume in the successful 'Clinical Practice inUrology' series Urological Protheses, Appliances andCatheters, provides for the first time practical informationon all those aspects of urology which depend on manufacturesarticles that are inserted in or attached to patients.

Any discussion of the present success in management of urological cancers evokes a mixed response.

In his Preface, Robert Whitaker emphasises the changes over the past ten to fifteen years: this means that any urologist over the age of 45 is already out of date in much of his or her knowledge of paediatric urology - unless there has been a genuine attempt at continuing medical education.

The purist might wish to have these opinions resolved by a well-planned clinical trial, but experience of clinical trials shows that they do not always produce results that are easily translated into a positive change in clinical practice.

In keeping with the aims of other books in this Series the Editors have concentrated on the practical aspects of management -in this case of the urinary tract in patients with spinal cord injury.