Abstract
Emphasizing “interactive exchange and discussion” among urologists worlwide, the mission of Uroweb (www.uroweb.org) is to be a global resource for urologic specialists and investigators, although the content is mostly from urologists in Europe and the United States. The European Association of Urology, which developed this World Wide Web site, notes it was born out of the desire to link educational and practical treatment information from a wide variety of sources.
Key words: Internet; Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH); Cancer, bladder; Kidney; Urology
On the home page of Uroweb, the Web site of the European Association of Urology, masked surgeons in scrubs, as if caught in the middle of a delicate procedure, surround their patient while peering out toward the viewer. Superimposed on this scene is a blue, computer-drawn spider with delicate legs that point to the site’s major links, arranged spider web-fashion (Fig. 1). At the end of one of the spider’s legs, for example, is Address Book, which links to the email addresses for several prominent urologists; at the end of another is Congress Agenda, which links to announcements of upcoming international urologic conferences, and another leg leads to Clinical Images, which links to medical images.
Figure 1.
Uroweb home page (www.uroweb.org/indexxx.html).
The Web theme continues, with each linked topic area treated almost as a separate Web page: StonesWeb, EndoWeb, BPHWeb, and so on. The site offers an extensive slide library of clinical images, plus case reports, poster abstracts, discussions of state-of-the-art issues, and urology congress agendas and highlights.
Site Tour
Registration is free. Topic areas include but are not limited to: BPH; stones; UTI; cancer of the testis, prostate, kidney, and bladder; pediatric urology; endoscopic urology and urologic surgery; andrology; and basic research in urology.
Each topic area has a home page that contains 3 essential elements: an introductory paragraph that offers a clinical perspective; a navigation box that links to such features as cases and posters on the topic; and a list of the latest content additions to the area. There are 5 links to the “Latest Additions.” These include a slide presentation on New Diagnostics in Bladder Cancer from the Netherlands plus poster abstracts from England, Germany, and Spain. Instructions are included for downloading and decompressing complete slide presentations that include text and graphics such as that shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Worldwide incidence of bladder cancer (www.uroweb.org/slides/-slides010/index.html).
BPHWeb. The Latest Additions to the BPHWeb include links to 3 interactive case reports and 2 posters.
StonesWeb. The StonesWeb has featured a slide presentation on the pathophysiology of stones from the Institute for Urology in London plus poster abstracts from the University of Bonn in Germany and a hospital in the Czech Republic. In January, the latest addition to StonesWeb, however, was more than 6 months old—June 1998.
Kidney & TestisWeb. In the Kidney & TestisWeb area are poster presentations describing use of ultrasound in management of renal and testicular cancer, from researchers in Poland and Italy, respectively. A literature review from a team of Israeli investigators outlines the effect of tumor size on outcome of radical nephrectomy for management of localized renal cell carcinoma.
UroPedWeb. The Pediatric Urology link offers 2 interesting slide presentations made in June 1998 at London’s Institute for Urology. The first was on reconstructive pediatric urology and the second outlined a method for assessment of outflow obstruction in children.
EndoWeb. The section on Minimally Invasive Urology, EndoWeb, discusses new tools, digital video techniques, and practice issues in endourology. The short introduction to this topic area cautions that although these new minimally invasive methods often mean a shorter hospital stay for patients, they can pose problems for clinicians. Nevertheless, when all goes well, minimally invasive urologic procedures can have a satisfactory outcome for physicians and patients, as the site illustrates in an interesting presentation in the department “Unusual Cases in Ureteroscopic Laparoscopy.”
Images in Urology. Now posted in the Images in Urology link are key steps in a variety of corrective surgeries conducted by a hospital urology service in Valenciennes, France: correction of a large cystocele and uterine prolapse after hysterectomy; the Ulmsten operation-a prosthesis to treat stress incontinence in women (Fig. 3); and the Nesbit correction for penile curvature (Fig. 4). Email links allow the user to submit questions to the clinician presenting the images or to one of UroWeb’s specialists.
Figure 3.
Ulmsten operation: transvaginal tension-free prosthesis for stress incontinence (www.uroweb.org/imagesinurology/imag001/index.html).
Figure 4.
Nesbit correction for penile curvature (www.uroweb.org/imagesinurology/imag_oct_2/index.html).
Conclusion
The Uroweb site is maintained by Uro Communications, a urology-focused communications agency, and by the European Association of Urology, an organization of 14,000 urologists, urologists-in-training, and urologic scientists.
The site is rich in content, but viewer be warned. Whether because of the graphics, the multiple links, or a slow Web site server, opening the pages on the site is very slow, even with a high-speed Internet connection. The viewer must be patient and persistent to access the content.