Rolin,
Well they like to tell you when they lose a dr. that they've retired but Dr. Blute is very much involved and now at Mass General head of a new surgical department badly needed there as their expertise has previously been on bladder preservation.
As for Konety ..another loss for UCSF as he's one of the few surgeons that can do all three diversions.
And how do i know these surgeons...8 yrs of research..talking to other uro's (they love to dish the dirt)...reading every paper out there and who wrote it. Its actually a very limited field..urology a big field..bladder cancer a small field. And some of the largest institutions may have a great ranking for urology but go through their list of urolgists and find their main interests...won't find much bladder cancer at some places. Other not as prominant centers such as U. of Iowa, U. of Pittsburgh, U. of Chicago, St. Louis have some of the top specialists in bladder cancer. Mayo right now has very few ..one maybe but i don't know much about him except he has training from Cleveland Clinic.. Dr. Igor Frank
www.mayoclinic.org/bio/12529231.html
If you go through their list of urologists you'll find prostate, testicular, female incontinence......not much bladder cancer specialty
www.mayoclinic.org/urology-rst/doctors.html
Cleveland Clinic having the same problem right now in that field...tops in urology..but main Dr. went to USC/Norris and took his team with him leaving them to scramble and bring in lots of new and very young uro/surgeons which is good but without much of a track record. They only have one of the old guard still there.
I'll try to track down some of the papers written by Konety. He's impressive.
www.auanet.org/content/about-us/scholarships-and-programs/leadership-program.cfm?sub=class2008
these guys are ALL impressive.....
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