News

Study wins International award for Freeman Hospital

Sunday 29th March 2015

A project from Newcastle Urology at The Freeman Hospital presented recently at the Annual Meeting of the International Continence Society in Brazil has won an award for Best Poster presentation.

Whilst at the conference Miss Morton (urology registrar) presented a poster with results from the group of patients undergoing artificial urinary sphincter insertion over the last 12 years. This is offered to men who have urinary leakage most commonly after prostate cancer surgery or injury to the muscle which controls urinary continence. This surgery was shown to improve men’s quality of life and the sphincter implants have been widely regarded as the best method to stop urine leakage.

Previous studies had shown around 1 in 10 men having the device inserted would get an infection requiring it to be removed or replaced. Our work showed a significant reduction in the number of devices becoming infected or requiring removal after the introduction of antibiotic coating to the sphincters. Patients also completed a questionnaire which showed the majority to have a good quality of life after the operation with a good reduction in the leakage of urine.