Added: 11/23/2006 |
Terms Familiar to a Specialist in Pediatric UrologyThe author of the following article did not expect to become a source of information on pediatric urology. She had developed an interest in birth defects, and had read a book that touched on many of the most frequently-seen birth defects. Later she found that information of value in identifying the problem of a former neighbor. The neighbor's young grandson had had a tumor; the author recognized it as being Wilm's tumor.
Yet the physician who has chosen to specialize in pediatric urology must read extensively about more than just the most frequently-seen birth defects. He must also gather a growing amount of information about the sort of defects that can appear in an infant’s urinary or reproductive system. He must therefore learn the following terms.
A specialist in pediatric urology needs to become aware of the possible occurrence of a genitourinary malformation. Such malformations can cause an infant’s urinary or reproductive system to deviate from the pattern detailed in medical texts, texts such as Gray’s Anatomy. The specialist in pediatric urology must be prepared to assist parents with identifying and treating such malformations.
A specialist in pediatric urology would, for example, need to be able to detect an undescended testis. He would need to be able to show parents how to touch the infant’s scrotum, to feel for the expected testicular organ. He would need to have available for the concerned parents, literature about how such a malformation can be corrected.
A specialist in pediatric urology might have a patient with a mutated number 11 chromosome. A mutation in the short arm of that chromosome can cause the development of a genitourinary malformation. The same specialist could also have a patient with posterior urethral valves or with Wilm’s tumor. The specialist would need to offer assurances that such conditions can be treated; the child with such a condition can usually expect to have a full and useful life.
On certain occasions a specialist in pediatric urology might be among a group of urology associates. Sometimes one or more urology associates are consulted by a specialist in yet another field. That is what happened one afternoon in 1998, when a neurologist in Los Angeles County had a patient present him with a perplexing problem.
The patient complained about having a frequent and strong urge to urinate. She had been referred to the neurologist, because she also had a ventricular-peritoneal shunt. That shunt carried fluid from her skull cavity into her peritoneal cavity. The neurologist thought that the long tube might be pressing on her bladder. He thus invited an urologist to join him in the examining room.
Their conversation could one day have relevance to a specialist in pediatric urology. That is because it is now possible to insert a shunt into the body of an infant still in the mother’s stomach. That procedure would be followed, if it were found that the developing infant had hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid in the cranial cavity. That’s another term that could become familiar to the specialist in pediatric urology.
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