March 28, 2008 - The European Association of Urology (EAU) are pleased to announce the release of several new updates of their guidelines at the occasion of their annual meeting held in Milan, March 26th-29th, 2008.

One of the new updates achieved for 2008 is a guideline on the management of Neurogenic Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction (NLUTD). There are no data on the overall prevalence of NLUTD in the general population, but data are available on the prevalence of the underlying conditions and the relative risk of those for the development of NLUTD. The relatively small sample sizes and the lack of high quality published data – for surgical procedures this is a widely recognized phenomenon – but in this case also for conservative treatment options (such as e.g. neuromodulation, physiotherapy, intermittent catheterisation and botulinum toxin) present a challenge when producing a guidance document.

Notwithstanding those hurdles, the panel managed to provide useful and concise information for clinical practitioners on definitions, diagnosis, therapy and follow-up of NLUTD. Whenever possible, recommendations have been graded to assist the readers in determining the validity of the information provided.

In many instances, NLUTD is a multi-facetted pathology and may be caused by a wide variety of diseases and events affecting the nervous system and treatment generally involves a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and healthcare providers, often including a urologist. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the main users of the prior NLUTD publication were those working mostly outside the urological field; for instance clinicians employed in rehab centres. NLUTD is an unstable condition and restoring and safeguarding quality of life represents a very important aspect in the global management of neurogenic patients.

The panel developing this guideline was chaired by M. Stöhrer and included D. Castro-Diaz, E. Chartier-Kastler, G. Del Popolo, G. Kramer, J. Pannek, P. Radziszewski and J-J. Wyndaele.

All EAU guidelines texts are available full text online on the society website: http://www.uroweb.org/professional-resources/guidelines/

For more information, please contact:

Lindy Brouwer
EAU communication officer
communicationoffice@uroweb.org
www.uroweb.org
Tel: +31 (0)26 3890680