Written specifically for urological trainees by a distinguished team of contributors, this third edition of The Scientific Basis of Urology provides the reader with a thorough coverage of urology. Every area, function, illness and treatment of the urinary tract, along with specific discussions of the relevant anatomy and physiology, is included in clearly written text, abundantly illustrated with full color photographs and diagrams. Each chapter takes the basic principles of its topic area and expands upon them to ensure maximum understanding.

Entirely new chapters in the Third Edition:

• Genetic and Biological Alterations in Cancer
• The Scientific Basis of Male Hypogonadism
• Minimally Invasive Technologies in the Treatment of Renal and Prostate Cancer
• Preoperative Assessment

The anticipation of seeing and having to manage patients suffering from sensory disorders of the urinary tract brings dismay and foreboding to the urologist. This stems from his experience of the time that these patients take up, both at the stage of initial interview and subsequently during numerous consultations over periods of months and years. This and the largely unsatisfactory response to various forms of therapy in the past are reason enough for this bold attempt to define with objectivity the notoriously subjective disorders of interstitial cystitis, urethral syndrome and prostatodynia. In writing this book the principal aim of the authors has been to define these three entities concisely and to describe the investiga tional methods which are required to establish the diagnosis in each case. The importance of this cannot be overestimated since, when the label of one or other of these conditions is attached to a patient, further objective consideration of the case is-endangered. The casual attribution of these sensory diagnoses to inappropriate cases is already on record as having dulled clinical awareness and led to oversight of progressive disease and its sometimes avoidable conse quences."