Riccardo Bientinesi

Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli · Department of Urology

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a progressive neurological autoimmune disease with a diverse range of urological symptomatology, and most MS patients experience 1 or more moderate to severe urinary symptoms, as well as bladder and/or sexual disorders. Urologists play the director’s role in evaluating and treating these patients. Therefore, identifying t...

Introduction: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common causes of sepsis presenting to hospitals. Treating complicated UTIs is extremely important due to their potential mortality. Levofloxacin is a fluoroquinolone antibacterial that has become one of the cornerstones of antibiotic therapy of complicated UTIs and pyelonephritis sinc...

Introduction: The pharmacological treatment of urinary incontinence and overactive bladder (OAB) has been, for a longer time, based on antimuscarinic agents. In recent years, two other pharmacological principles have been introduced for the treatment of OAB and urgency urinary incontinence: the β3-adrenergic agent mirabegron and botulinum neurotoxi...

Bladder metastases from lung cancer are extremely rare; in some previously reported cases in with the primitive tumor was a lung adenocarcinoma, the finding of an intact epithelium overlying the bladder tumour was considered suggestive of a secondary lesion. Differentiating primary bladder non-urothelial cancers from metastatic lesions can be diffi...

Overactive Bladder Syndrome (OAB) is a clinical entity characterised by urgency, with or without increased urinary frequency and/or urgency incontinence. It is a chronic condition with a high prevalence that increases with age, thus being a growing health problem especially in developed countries due to increased life expectancy. Patients with this...

Objective: To resume each specialist's role in the management of neurologic urinary tract symptoms (nLUTS) and sexual dysfunctions (SD) in patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS). Material and methods: We asked a neurologist, a urologist and a gynecologist, experts on neuro-urology and sexual dysfunction at our hospital, to resume their...

Background: The goal of precision medicine in prostate cancer (PCa) is to individualize the treatment according to the patient's germline mutation status. PCa has a very high rate of genetic predisposition compared with other cancers in men, with an estimated rate of cancers ascribable to hereditary factors of 5-15%. Methods: A systematic search...

Partial nephrectomy (PN) is the gold standard treatment for localized renal masses. Robot-assisted PN (RAPN) has overcome laparoscopy’s technical limitations, greatly expanding the indications of minimally invasive PN, which is dominated by renal artery clamping in almost all published series. We compared off-clamp RAPN (OFFC-RAPN) with the open ap...

Aims: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by a great variety symptoms. Most MS patients suffer from neurogenic lower urinary tract symptoms (nLUTS) and erectile dysfunctions (ED). The aim this study is to assess the impact of nLUTS and ED on marital relationships in MS patients. Materials a...

Aim: The aim of this study is to assess whether there are some correlations between radiomics and baseline clinical-biological data of prostate cancer (PC) patients using Fluorine-18 Fluoroethylcholine (18F-FECh) PET/CT. Methods: Digital rectal examination results (DRE), Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) serum levels, and bioptical-Gleason Score (...

Background: To date, robotic surgery in urology is well established all over the world. The newest platform on the market is the HUGO™ RAS system, developed by Medtronic. In this paper we provide a brief description of the system and describe our system set-up and surgical approach with this new platform in our initial experience of robotic radica...

Robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) is the most adopted treatment for localized prostate cancer. The aim of this study was to explore the learning curves (LC) for overall and site-specific positive surgical margins (PSM) occurrence after RARP of multiple surgeons within a step-structured mentor-initiated training program. The study included...

Purposes Little research exists on potential learning curve for male sling procedures. We aimed to perform a learning curve analysis of a single surgeon’s experience of sling placement evaluating multiple outcomes and using the cumulative sum failure methodology. Methods The study included 65 consecutive patients that underwent implantation of a f...

Background The management of non-muscle invasive bladder carcinoma (NMIBC) after transurethral resection of a bladder tumor consists of adjuvant intravesical therapy and strict and long surveillance with urine cytology and cystoscopy. The Bladder EpiCheck test (Nucleix Ltd) (BE) is a newly developed urinary markers based on DNA methylation changes...

Introduction Ureteropelvic junction obstruction is a pathology typically diagnosed in childhood. Nevertheless, some clinically silent cases may be unnoticed until adulthood. Case description We report the case of a 53-year-old female with hydronephrosis due to ureteropelvic junction stenosis diagnosed in the adulthood, who subsequently developed o...

Prostate cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in man. Since the first MRI was performed, enormous progress has been made in diagnosis, treatment, and follow up of PCa, mainly due to multiparametric prostatic MRI (mpMRI). Although mpMRI has become the best imaging tool for identifying PCa, some limitations still exist. Prostate imagin...

Aims Lower urinary tract symptoms are common in multiple sclerosis (MS) and have a great impact on quality of life. We evaluated prevalence and characteristics of urological symptoms in a cohort of patients with MS. Methods This is a cross-sectional study conducted on consecutive patients with MS attending our Center in 2018. We evaluated prevalen...

Modifiable lifestyle-related risk factors are the object of increasing attention, with a view to primary and tertiary prevention, to limit the onset and development of diseases. Also in the urological field there is accumulating evidence of the relationship between urological diseases and lifestyle-related risk factors that can influence their inci...

Machine learning (ML) is the subfield of artificial intelligence (AI), born from the marriage between statistics and computer science, with the unique purpose of building prediction algorithms able to improve their performances by automatically learning from massive data sets. The availability of ever-growing computational power and highly evolved...

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune progressive neurological disease with a diverse range of urological symptomatology, since most MS patients experience one or more moderate to severe urinary symptoms, as well as bladder and/or sexual disorders. Urologists play the director's role in evaluating and treating these patients. Therefore, identifying a...

Carcinoma in situ (CIS) is believed to be a precursor of muscle-invasive carcinomas that may arise from these flat high-grade, superficial urothelial lesions. CIS accounts for approximately 10% of all bladder tumors. Therapeutic options for urothelial CIS are limited, and in order to inhibit disease progression and recurrence, current guidelines re...

This correction is being done to update the right surname of first name of authors of this manuscript. This does not change the results or the views presented in this manuscript.

Aims Bladder EpiCheck is one of several urinary tests studied to identify bladder tumours and analyses 15 methylation biomarkers determining bladder cancer presence on the basis of methylation profile. Methods 374 patients diagnosed with high-grade non-muscle invasive bladder cancer were treated and followed for 1 year with voided urine cytology a...

The opportunity to prevent, to improve their prognosis, or even to cure uro-oncological diseases by modifying the lifestyle habits is a very modern topical subject and represents a great and fascinating challenge for the future. A PubMed and Web of Science databases search has been performed to review the published knowledge on most important lifes...

Introduction To determine in a large population of community‐dwelling incontinent patients the accuracy and determinants of pad count as measure of urinary incontinence (UI), using data from a multicentre 48‐hour pad test study. Materials and methods Incontinent subjects provided with absorbent products from 01/2012 to 03/2016 volunteered to perfo...

Aims: To objectively assess and enhance the appropriateness of continence products provision to sufferers from urinary incontinence (UI) managed with containment strategies. Methods: Incontinent patients of five Italian continence care services were included in this industry-supported study from 01/2012 to 03/2016. All patients/carers have been inv...

Voltage-gated type 7 K+ (KV7 or KCNQ) channels regulate the contractility of various smooth muscles. With this study, we aimed to assess the role of KV7 channels in the regulation of human detrusor contractility, as well as the gene and protein expression of KV7 channels in this tissue. For these purposes, the isolated organ technique, RT-qPCR, and...

Introduction: Licenced oral pharmacotherapies for overactive bladder (OAB) act on muscarinic receptors or β3-adrenoceptors. The search for new drugs to treat OAB that have novel mechanisms of action is very active, with the aim of discovering more effective and/or better tolerated agents. Methods: A literature review of the most frequently used...

Transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) is the tumor that most frequently affects the urinary tract. The most common location is at the level of the bladder; the diagnosis is based, as per the follow-up, on urine cytology, endoscopic, and radiological examinations. Urine cytologic study is an important noninvasive tool used in the diagnosis and follow-up...

Introduzione. Il robot è ormai il protagonista in molte specialità chirurgiche, soprattutto, in campo urologico. Le variazioni emodinamiche, registrate durante la prostatectomia radicale laparoscopica robotica (RALP), a causa del Trendelenburg a 30°, del pneumoperitoneo e dell a restrizione di liquidi sono state studiate con diversi sistemi di moni...

Scopo Riportare i risultati a medio termine su efficacia e sicurezza di una nuova sling per l'incontinenza da sforzo post-chirurgica maschile. Materiali e metodi: Studio prospettico monocentrico. Dal 11/2012 al 12/2014, 25 pazienti affetti da incontinenza urinaria da sforzo dopo prostatectomia radicale (21) o dopo TURP (4) sono stati sottoposti a...

Hypothesis - Aim of study. To evaluate safety, tolerability and efficacy on urinary continence and quality-of-life of a new titanized sling for male post-surgical stress incontinence Study design, materials and methods: Interventional single-armed prospective study. From 11/2012 to 12/2014, 25 patients with stress urinary incontinence after radical...

The introduction of robot-assisted surgery represents a milestone in the history of surgery. Today, many surgical disciplines make use of the DaVinci robotic system in performing surgery, even complex ones. Italy stands as one of the countries with a greater diffusion of robotics in surgery, particularly in urological surgery. In Italy, every year,...

Primary bladder neck dysfunction (PBND) is a condition of lower urinary tract in which the bladder neck does not open enough during voiding. this causes lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), which include frequency, urgency, urge incontinence, nocturia (known as "storage symptoms"), hesitancy, incomplete emptying, decrease strength of stream (known...

Materials and methods: The study was conducted from December 2011 to December 2012 on 95 patients between the ages of 20 and 65 years: 44 of which had been undergoing dialysis for over a year and 51 of whom had undergone kidney transplants more than 6 months before. Comorbidities were carefully recorded, erectile function was evaluated the with II...

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the third most common genitourinary malignancy in general population. The incidence of RCC is increasing in the United States, and it is slightly higher among African Americans than the Caucasian population. In 2011, there were approximately 60,920 new cases of kidney cancer reported in the United States (37,120 males...

Aim. To evaluate safety, tolerability and efficacy on urinary continence and quality-of-life of a new titanized sling for male post-surgical stress incontinence. Matherials and methods: Interventional single-armed prospective study. From 11/2012 to 10/2014, 23 patients with stress urinary incontinence after radical prostatectomy (19) or TURP (4) u...

Aim. To evaluate safety, tolerability and efficacy on urinary continence and quality-of-life of a new titanized sling for male post-surgical stress incontinence. Matherials and methods: Interventional single-armed prospective study. From 11/2012 to 10/2014, 23 patients with stress urinary incontinence after radical prostatectomy (19) or TURP (4) un...

The ongoing research on pioneering drug candidates for the overactive bladder (OAB) aimed to overcome the limitations of currently licensed pharmacotherapies, such as antimuscarinics, β3-adrenergic agents, and botulinum neurotoxin, has been reviewed performing a systematic literature review and web search. The review covers the exploratory agents a...

Antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) is used to minimize infectious complications resulting from interventions. Due to high rates of development of bacterial resistance and side effects, the use of antibiotics must be weighed on the basis of high levels of evidence. The main endpoints of urology AP are the prevention of symptomatic urogenital infections, ur...

Male stress urinary incontinence, which has radical prostatectomy as the main aetiology, affects about 39% of the adult male population and is one of the complications of radical prostatectomy with the greatest impact on the quality of life of patients. There are a wide range of treatments for stress urinary incontinence available to the urologist,...

The voltage-dependent K + (K V) channels encoded by the KCNQ gene family (K V 7.1–7.5) are delayed rectifier K + channels with important functional roles in regulating the membrane potential of various cell types, including cardiomyocytes, neurons and smooth muscle cells (1). The opening of K V 7.2-7.3 channels in neurons gives rise to the M curren...

Hem-o-Lok clips (Weck Surgical Instruments, Teleflex Medical, Durham, North Carolina, USA) are widely used in robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy because of their easy application and secure clamping. To date, there have been some reports of their migration into the urinary tract, causing urethral erosion, bladder neck contractures or...

Urinary tract infectionsUrinary tract infections (UTI) are amongst the most frequent bacterial infections and therefore are responsible for a significant fraction of antibiotic use, thus carrying a relevant social and economic burden. UTI may present as benign, uncomplicated cystitis or severe, life-threatening urosepsis. Due to the heterogeneity o...

Introduction and hypothesis: The impressive prevalence of overactive bladder (OAB) and the relevant limitations of current treatments urge the need for novel therapeutic approaches. Methods: A systematic literature and web search was performed to identify investigational drugs that entered the early and late phases of clinical development for wo...

Paraneoplastic syndromes may represent a major clinical problem also in patients with malignancies of the genitourinary tract. In this context, some paraneoplastic syndromes are of particular interest because of their clinically relevant incidence, such as endocrine paraneoplastic syndromes caused by inappropriate release of hormonal peptides, synd...

Introduction: Overactive bladder (OAB) and urinary incontinence, although not life-threatening, are very bothersome chronic health conditions. The limitations of current pharmacological treatment urge the need for novel drugs with alternative mechanisms of action. Huge efforts in this area of research led to the synthesis of several selective and...

To determine efficacy and safety of OnabotulinumtoxinA (BoNT-A) injection therapy in medically refractory patients with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) due to primary bladder-neck dysfunction (PBND). Thirty-five consecutive ambulatory males diagnosed with PBND and refractory to medical therapy, with IPSS > 15, Qmax < 15 ml/sec, and total prosta...

Mirabegron opened a new era in the treatment of overactive bladder (OAB). For the first time physicians dealing with OAB have an effective alternative to the pharmacological mainstay of the therapy for this disorder, the antimuscarinic drugs. This first-in-class, potent β3adrenoceptors agonist has recently received approval by regulatory authoritie...

Retigabine is an anticonvulsant drug indicated as adjunctive treatment of partial onset seizures in adults. It exerts its anticonvulsant action by reducing neuronal excitability through activation of type 7 voltage-dependent K + (K V 7) channels encoded by the KCNQ genes (Rundfeldt et al., 2000). These channels include 5 subtypes (K V 7.1-7.5) and...

Mirabegron is a novel, once-daily, orally active, first-in-class, potent β(3)-adrenoceptor agonist recently approved by Food and Drug Administration for overactive bladder therapy. Phase II studies and four large-scale phase III multinational randomized, controlled trials have supported the efficacy and tolerability of mirabegron in the clinical tr...