The social media revolution is changing the conference experience: analytics and trends from eight international meetings.

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the use of Twitter at urology conferences to enhance the social media conference experience. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We prospectively registered the hashtags of eight international urology conferences taking place in 2013, using the social media metrics website, Symplur.com. In addition, we prospectively registered the hashtag for the European Association of Urology (EAU) Annual Congress for 3 consecutive years (2012-2014) to analyse the trend in the use of Twitter at a particular meeting. Metrics including number of 'tweets', number of participants, tweet traffic per day, and overall digital impressions, which were captured for 5 days before each conference, the conference itself, and the following 2 days. We also measured corresponding social media activity at a very large non-urology meeting (the American Society of Clinical Oncology) for comparative purposes. RESULTS: Twitter activity was noted at all eight conferences in 2013. In all, 12,363 tweets were sent generating over 14 million impressions. The number of participants tweeting at each meeting varied from 80 (Congress of the Société Internationale d'Urologie, #SIU2013) to 573 (the American Urological Association, #AUA13). Overall, the AUA meeting (#AUA13) generated the most Twitter activity with >8.6 million impressions and a total of 4663 tweets over the peri-conference period. It also had the most impressions and tweets per day over this period, at 717,000 and 389, respectively. The EAU Annual Congress 2013 (#EAU13) generated 1.74 million impressions from a total of 1762 tweets from 236 participants. For trends in Twitter use, there was a very sharp rise in Twitter activity at the EAU Annual Congress between 2012 and 2014. Over this 3-year period, the number of participants increased almost 10-fold, leading to an increase in the number of tweets from 347 to almost 6000. At #EAU14, digital impressions reached 7.35 million with 5903 tweets sent by 797 participants. CONCLUSIONS: Urological conferences, to a varying extent, have adopted social media as a means of amplifying the conference experience to a wider audience, generating international engagement and global reach. Twitter is a very powerful tool that amplifies the content of scientific meetings, and conference organisers should put in place strategies to capitalise on this.

Early urinary continence recovery after robot-assisted radical prostatectomy in older Australian men.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the recovery of urinary continence (UC) after robot-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) in men aged ≥70 and <70 years at 1-year follow-up and to assess for preoperative predictors of UC recovery, as older, healthy men with localised prostate cancer are often denied curative surgical treatment on the grounds of worse UC recovery. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In all, 262 patients with prostate cancer having undergone RARP between May 2008 and September 2012, under the care of two consultant urological surgeons at three Melbourne hospitals, were identified. Patients were categorised based on their age ≥70 and <70 years and compared with regards to two endpoints; percentage fully continent and mean pads/day at 4-6 weeks, and 3, 6, 9 and 12 months after RARP. RESULTS: Of the 262 men, 9% (24) were aged ≥70 years. Older men had higher PSA levels (P = 0.007) and clinical stages (P < 0.001) compared with the younger cohort. There were more non-nerve sparing procedures in the older group (P = 0.009) and a shorter mean operative time (P = 0.004). At 4-6 weeks after RARP, the number of pads used per day was greater in older men (P = 0.03) and there was a trend towards fewer older men being fully continent (P = 0.08) than their younger counterparts; however, by 3 months and all time-points thereafter there was no difference. The 12-month UC rates were 89% and 92% for men aged <70 and ≥70 years, respectively. Neither age, body mass index, D'Amico risk group, nerve sparing nor use of Rocco suture were predictors of time to UC recovery. CONCLUSION: UC recovery after RARP in men aged ≥70 years appears comparable to younger men and therefore not a reason to deny older men with a reasonable life-expectancy curative surgical treatment of localised prostate cancer.