Introduction: The aim of our study was to assess the efficacy and safety of laser lithotripsy in pregnant patients. Methods: In this retrospective study, we reviewed the 15 pregnant women who have been treated for ureteral stones with semi-rigid ureteroscope and holmium laser at our center between Januarys 2007and April 2015. Results:The mean age of patients and mean gestational age was 29.3 years old 27.3 weeks respectively. Mean size of stones was 7.84 mm. Twelve patients had renal colic, and hematuria was found in 3 cases. Irritative urinary symptoms such as frequency and urgency detected in 6 ones and 2 patients had fever. The stone of all patients were fragmented by using holmium laser lithotripter. In 5 patients stone residual fragments were removed by grasper while other 10 patients were left to pass fragments spontaneously. No intraoperative and postoperative urological or obstetric complication was seen. Conclusion: Laser lithotripsy is safe and efficacious in pregnant patients who have ureteral stone that does not respond to conservative management.

To evaluate the effect of microsurgical inguinal varicocelectomy with testicular delivery on semen parameters. A total of 416 patients, diagnosed with grade III varicocele, were randomised into two groups. One group underwent microsurgical inguinal varicocelectomy without testicular delivery. For the other group, testicular delivery and ligation of gubernacular and all collateral veins were performed. A semen analysis was performed before and 6 months after the procedure. Mean age of the patients in the case and control groups was 27.3 ± 6.1 years and 25.9 ± 4.6 years respectively (p = .1). The total number of recurrence after 6 months in the conventional and testicular delivery groups was 13 (6.5%) and 3 (1.5%) (p < .05). No case of hydrocele formation was observed in any of the groups. All sperm parameters were improved 6 months after the surgery in both groups. But comparing the mean improved difference between the two groups revealed a significant difference in improvement in sperm motility for patients who had undergone varicocelectomy with testicular delivery (p = .05). Microsurgical inguinal varicocelectomy is a safe and efficient technique with a minimum chance of post-operative complications and recurrence and also may have role in improvement of sperm motility compared with conventional techniques.

Objectives: To test a novel neural network prediction model for prostate cancer based on age, rectal examination, prostate specific antigen (PSA) and prostate volume. Methods: 572 men who underwent trans-rectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsy from February, 2013 to September, 2014 participated in the study. Prostate configuration based on digital rectal examination, serum PSA level, and prostate volume were recorded. Pathologic outcomes were categorized in two groups: adenocarcinoma vs. noncancerous reports. A multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network was designed in which total PSA, free PSA, age, rectal examination results and prostate volume were vectors.Results: 566 men with the average age of 65.9 ± 8.6 years. Average total and free PSA levels were 19.77 ± 50.03 ng/mL and 2.46 ± 8.36 ng/mL respectively. Average free to total PSA ratio was 14.68 ± 11.24%. Prostate size was 58.58 ± 31.64 CC on average. Age, total PSA, prostate volume and abnormal DRE were correlated with prostate cancer at biopsy, and the most powerful of all was abnormal DRE with odds ratio of 0.12. Neural networks were formed on a 3-layer perceptron and finally a network of 6 entry, 9 middle, and 2 output nodes was selected with the learning rate of 0.05. The Correct prediction rate for the model was 85.3%. Conclusions: It seems that our three-layer perceptron neural network model proves better results than the logistic regression model in predicting the presence of prostate cancer based on total and free PSA, DRE result, prostate volume and age.