In recent years, a number of studies purport to show that active surveillance with the potential for delayed treatment (AS-DT) is a feasible option for selected prostate cancer patients, namely those with low-risk tumors.

Research developments that have implications for nephrology and urology certainly are not limited to the meetings and journals targeting these specialties. That is why our news coverage extends to meetings that nephrologists and urologists usually do not attend and journals they usually do not read.

Through millions of years of evolution, nature has created a fantastic array of plant and animal species, each with specific adaptations to survive. These adaptations have resulted in an incalculable number of organic compounds unique to each living thing.

Physicians practice medicine with great sincerity. They want to help their sick patients get well and stay well, and they dole out treatments in good faith and with the best of intentions. From time to time, however, data emerge suggesting that the treatments upon which they rely are of little or no benefit.

Clinicians in virtually every medical and surgical specialty would have little trouble citing services for which they considered third-party reimbursement woefully inadequate for the time involved. Medicare reductions in payments for commonly performed procedures have forced physicians to change their practices so that they can pay for ever-increasing office expenses and still make a decent living.

The placebo is an integral part of clinical research, helping investigators arrive at the true effect of an experimental treatment. The mechanisms underlying the placebo effect are not fully understood, but it is clear that if subjects believe they are taking something that could help them, they can experience improvement in signs and symptoms, even by objective measures.

For centuries, human beings have spread diseases long distances through their travels. Yellow fever and the mosquitoes that transmit it, for instance, are thought to have originated in Africa and been introduced to the New World by slave ships in the 1500s. The 1918 influenza pandemic illustrates how contagious diseases can spread throughout the world.

Most patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) are consigned to life on dialysis. Most undergo in-center hemodialysis three times a week, greatly diminishing their quality of life. Moreover, dialysis patients have a relatively high mortality. In 2003, three-year survival of dialysis patients was 56%, according to the U.S. Renal Data System.

Two articles in this issue report on outcomes in patients who underwent holmium laser enucleation for enlarged prostates, called HoLEP for short.