Hem-o-lok clips are widely used during robot-assisted and laparoscopic radical prostatectomy to control the lateral pedicles. There are a few reports of hem-o-lok clip migration into the bladder or vesico-urethral anastomosis and only four cases of hem-o-lok clip migration resulting into bladder neck contracture. Herein, we describe the first case, to our knowledge, of hem-o-lok clip migration leading to severe bladder neck contracture and subsequent stress urinary incontinence.

Background: Penile self-injection of various oils is still carried out among Eastern Europe people for penile girth augmentation despite the potential destructive complications of this practice are well known. Penile reactions to such foreign bodies include scarring, abscess formation, ulceration, and even Fournier’s gangrene; voiding problems due to mineral oil self-injection have been reported only once. To our knowledge, we describe the first case of paraffin self-injection for penile girth augmentation presenting with acute urinary retention. Case presentation: A 27-year-old Romanian man presented with severe penile pain and acute urinary retention five years after having practiced repeated penile self-injections of paraffin for penile girth augmentation. The penile shaft was massively enlarged, fibrotic and phymotic; urethral catheterization failed due to severe stricture of the proximal pendulum urethra. The patients refused placement of a suprapubic catheter and underwent immediate penile surgical exploration. The scarred tissue between dartos and Buck’s fascia and a fibrotic ring occluding the urethra were removed and the penile skin reconstructed. Pathology confirmed the diagnosis of paraffinoma. The patient resumed normal voiding immediately after catheter removal on second postoperative day; he was very pleased with cosmetic, sexual and voiding results at six weeks, six months and 1 year follow-up. Conclusions: The present report describes a novel complication of penile self-injection for penile girth augmentation. Because of the increasing number of patients seeking penile augmentation, physicians dealing with sexual medicine should pay more attention to such request to prevent the use of non medical treatments that can turn into medical disasters.

To evaluate the safety and efficacy of abiraterone acetate (AA) in the “real life” clinical practice for men with chemotherapy-naïve metastatic castration-resistant prostate. A consecutive series of patients with mCRPC in 9 Italian tertiary centres treated with AA was collected. Demographics, clinical parameters, treatment outcomes and toxicity were recorded. The Brief Pain Inventory scale Q3 was tracked and patient treatment satisfaction was evaluated. Survival curves were estimated by the method of Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression and compared by the log-rank test statistic. We included 145 patients (mean age 76.5y). All patients were on androgen deprivation therapy. Patients had prior radiotherapy, radical prostatectomy, both treatments or exclusive androgen deprivation therapy in 17%, 33%, 9% and 40%, respectively. 57% of the patients had a Gleason score higher more than 7 at diagnosis. 62% were asymptomatic patients. The median serum total PSA at AA start was 17 ng/mL (range 0,4–2100). The median exposure to AA was 10 months (range 1–35). The proportion of patients achieving a PSA decline ≥50% at 12 weeks was 49%. Distribution of patient satisfaction was 32% “greatly improved”, 38% “improved”, 24% “not changed”, 5.5% “worsened”. Grade 3 and 4 toxicity was recorded in 17/145 patients 11.7% (70% cardiovascular events, 30% critical elevation of AST/ALT levels). At the last follow-up, median progression free and overall survival were 17 and 26.5 months, respectively. Both outcomes significantly correlated with the presence of pain, patient satisfaction, PSA baseline and PSA decline. The AA is effective and well tolerated in asymptomatic or slightly symptomatic mCRPC in a “real life” setting. The survival outcomes are influenced by the presence of pain, patient satisfaction, baseline PSA and PSA decline. The study was retrospectively registered at ISRCTN as DOI: 10.1186/ISRCTN 52513758 in date April the 30th 2016.

Penile paraffinoma is a well-known delayed complication of paraffin oil injection into the penis for penile girth augmentation but its MRI features have not been previously described.

Partial gland cryoablation (PGC) aims at destroying prostate cancer (PCa) foci while sparing the unaffected prostate tissue and the functionally relevant structures around the prostate. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has boosted PGC, but available evidence suggests that ablation margins may be positive due to MRI-invisible lesions. This study aimed at determining the potential role of intraoperative digital analysis of ablation margins (DAAM) by fluoresce confocal microscopy (FCM) of biopsy cores taken during prostate PGC. Ten patients with low to intermediate risk PCa scheduled for PGC were enrolled. After cryo-needles placement, 76 biopsy cores were taken from the ablation margins and stained by the urologist for FCM analysis. Digital images were sent for “real-time” pathology review. DAAM, always completed within the frame of PGC treatment (median time 25 min), pointed out PCa in 1/10 cores taken from 1 patient, thus prompting placement of another cryo-needle to treat this area. Standard HE evaluation confirmed 75 cores to be cancer-free while displayed a GG 4 PCa in 7% of the core positive at FCM. Our data point out that IDAAM is feasible and reliable, thus representing a potentially useful tool to reduce the risk of missing areas of PCa during PGC.

In this prospective observational study, we tested the feasibility and efficacy of a novel one-day PCa diagnosis path based on biparametric magnetic resonance (bpMRI) and digital pathology by fluorescence confocal microscopy (FCM). Patients aged 55–70 years scheduled for PBx due to increased PSA levels (3–10 ng/mL) and/or abnormal digitorectal examination were enrolled. All patients underwent bpMRI and PBx with immediate FCM evaluation of biopsy cores. Patients were asked to fill out a dedicated Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire. Patients’ satisfaction rates and concordance between digital pathology and standard HE evaluation were the outcomes of interest. Twelve patients completed our one-day PCa diagnosis path. BpMRI showed suspicious lesions in 7 patients. Digital pathology by FCM identified PCa in 5 (41.7%) of the 12 patients. Standard pathology confirmed the diagnosis made through digital pathology in all the cases. At a per patient level, high concordance between the methods was achieved in Gleason Grading (4 out of 5 patients). The level of agreement in the number of positive cores was lower but did not affect the choice of treatment in any of the 5 PCa cases. At a per core level, the agreement was very high for the diagnosis of anyPCa (96.2%) and csPCa (97.3%), with a k coefficient of 0.90 and 0.92, respectively (near perfect agreement). In conclusion, one-day PCa diagnosis by FCM represents a feasible, reliable, and fast diagnostic method that provides significant advantages in optimizing time and resources, leading to patients having a higher quality standard of care perception.