LaGrange, Chad A.

The NCCN Guidelines for Prostate Cancer Early Detection provide recommendations for individuals with a prostate who opt to participate in an early detection program after receiving the appropriate counseling on the pros and cons. These NCCN Guidelines Insights provide a summary of recent updates to the NCCN Guidelines with regard to the testing protocol, use of multiparametric MRI, and management of negative biopsy results to optimize the detection of clinically significant prostate cancer and minimize the detection of indolent disease.

Testicular cancer is relatively uncommon and accounts for <1% of all male tumors. However, it is the most common solid tumor in men between the ages of 20 and 34 years, and the global incidence has been steadily rising over the past several decades. Several risk factors for testicular cancer have been identified, including personal or family history of testicular cancer and cryptorchidism. Testicular germ cell tumors (GCTs) comprise 95% of malignant tumors arising in the testes and are categorized into 2 main histologic subtypes: seminoma and nonseminoma. Although nonseminoma is the more clinically aggressive tumor subtype, 5-year survival rates exceed 70% with current treatment options, even in patients with advanced or metastatic disease. Radical inguinal orchiectomy is the primary treatment for most patients with testicular GCTs. Postorchiectomy management is dictated by stage, histology, and risk classification; treatment options for nonseminoma include surveillance, systemic therapy, and nerve-sparing retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Although rarely occurring, prognosis for patients with brain metastases remains poor, with >50% of patients dying within 1 year of diagnosis. This selection from the NCCN Guidelines for Testicular Cancer focuses on recommendations for the management of adult patients with nonseminomatous GCTs.

The NCCN Guidelines for Kidney Cancer provide multidisciplinary recommendations for the clinical management of patients with clear cell and non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma, and are intended to assist with clinical decision-making. These NCCN Guidelines Insights summarize the NCCN Kidney Cancer Panel discussions for the 2020 update to the guidelines regarding initial management and first-line systemic therapy options for patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

Adverse events because of medical errors are a leading cause of death in the United States (US) exceeding the mortality rates of motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS. Improvements can and should be made to reduce the rates of preventable surgical errors because they account for nearly half of all adverse events within hospitals. Although minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has proven patient benefits such as reduced postoperative pain and hospital stay, its operative environment imposes substantial physical and cognitive strain on the surgeon increasing the risk of error. To mitigate errors and protect patients, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to improve MIS. Clinical human factors, and biomedical engineering principles and methodologies can be used to develop and assess laparoscopic surgery instrumentation, practices, and procedures. First, the foundational understanding and the imperative to transform health care into a high-quality and safe system is discussed. Next, a generalized perspective is presented on the impact of the design and redesign of surgical technologies and processes on human performance. Finally, the future of this field and the research needed to further improve the quality and safety of MIS is discussed.

Laparoendoscopic single-site surgery (LESS) is a new minimally invasive surgical technique that presents physical and mental challenges to surgeons. Currently, LESS procedures are commonly performed using surgical instruments designed for traditional multi-incision laparoscopic surgery. A pilot study was conducted to determine which laparoscopic instruments were the most efficient for LESS procedures. In a LESS surgical trainer, 24 novice users completed a simple surgical task using standard (non-articulating) straight laparoscopic graspers and two different articulating instruments. Task performance was scored based on completion time and the number of errors. Analyses showed that the use of the simpler straight instruments produced significantly faster times (p = 0.004 and p = 0.014) and higher task scores (p = 0.005 and p = 0.021) than the articulating instruments. These results suggest that standard laparoscopic hand instruments enable better novice performance for a basic LESS task.