A REVIEW OF UROLOGIC SURGERY

TRANSURETHRAL SURGERY  Thompson,³⁶ in a report concerning transurethral operations performed at the Mayo Clinic during 1935, called attention to the use of sodium ethyl-1-methylbutylthiobarbituric acid in producing anesthesia. This drug is injected intravenously and seems unusually well suited to urologic practice. This anesthetic is suitable for cystoscopic examinations, manipulation of ureteral stones, removal of vesical tumors, litholapaxy and transurethral prostatic resection, in fact for almost any type of transurethral procedure which can be completed within thirty minutes.During the year 63 patients with neoplasm of the bladder were treated by transurethral methods, involving destruction by electrocoagulation or excision of the growth with either an operating cystoscope or the Stern-McCarthy resectoscope. Until a few years ago the transurethral destruction of all but very small vesical neoplasms involved repeated cystoscopic treatments which often extended over a period of several weeks or months. At present practically any pedunculated growth can be removed