Department of Urology

In the field of urology, a marked increase has been recently noted in the number of malignant tumors such as prostate cancer and renal cancer, furthermore the role of a urologist is getting bigger such as urinary tract management for dysuria originating from enlargement of the prostate and neuropathy etc. in elderly people. Therefore, we think that urology is an important department to bear the 21st century’s medical care.

In our department, we provide safe and advanced medical care for community residents by our excellent facility and good staff. We perform daily clinical activities lead by highly specialized staff in each field such as malignant tumors in urology, urolithiasis, kidney transplantation, dysuria, and female urology. We also have 4 physicians who have urology laparoscopic technique certification (officially approved by the Japanese Urological Association, Japan Society for Endoscopic Surgery and Japanese Society of Endourology), which is difficult to obtain.

In the field of urology, especially in the field of malignant tumors, the progress and the spread of laparoscopic surgery is remarkable and many traditional abdominal operations are getting replaced with laparoscopic surgery and robotic-assisted surgery. Needless to say, laparoscopic surgery and robotic-assisted surgery are minimally invasive. We aim to establish laparoscopic surgery and robotic-assisted surgery procedures that are more powerful than abdominal operations, taking advantage of their clear and expanded operational vision at the maximum degree.

In addition, there are 12 affiliated hospitals all over Wakayama prefecture and the south side of Osaka prefecture. About 30 urologists are sent to the hospitals and they work to improve community medical care every day in alliance with Wakayama Medical University.

Research overview

Malignant tumors in urology

Because most of patients in the Department of Urology are elderly people, patients with cancer account for 70 to 80% of all patients in facilities such as university hospitals. Especially, along with the spread of PSA (prostate‐specific antigen), patients with prostate cancer is recently dramatically increasing. In our department, we have performed laparoscopic radical prostatectomy as a one-step advanced technique from traditional laparotomy radical prostatectomy, but we introduced a robotic-assisted surgery system “The Da Vinci Surgical System” in 2012 and currently we mainly perform robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy. This technique enables accurate a