Professor, Head of Pediatric Urodynamic Center, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University China Chair of Paediatric Urodynamic Group of Chinese Medical Association Vice-Chairman of Chinese Pediatric Surgeon Association
Physical therapist, specialized in pelvic floor muscle training and urotherapy. Postdoctoral researcher and teacher assistant at the Physical therapy Department of the Ghent University and urotherapist at the Urology Department of the Ghent University Hospital
Department of Pediatrics, Nephrology and Hypertension Medical University of Gdansk
Professor of Urology, Chief of Pediatric Urology University of Alabama at Birmingham
I write to you from icy Denmark shortly after our annual conference that took place in Taipei, Taiwan and which was by all means a very successful meeting.
This is the last presidential letter for 2022 and looking back I feel it has been a fruitful year for ICCS. This letter will be short and will be followed by a more extensive letter in January.
President, International Children’s Continence Society
Associate Professor of pediatrics, Consultant in Pediatric Nephrology
Aarhus, Danmark
Meet experts in regions of the world that are not represented within the board
Suggestions or comments should be addressed to the General Secretary.
ICCS has done a great job in organizing conferences, supporting research and education, creating international standardization, guidelines as well as pediatric patient’s service. Nowadays, it has a great opportunity to strengthen an international prestige and importance in opening to the new areas with the changing health care environment. The fundamental goal of the ICCS is to improve the quality of life and the life expectancy for all growing individuals with deficient bladder function, expressed as problems of storage and evacuation of urine. No doubt, the work of the ICCS is extremely important in this area. For approaching the goal of ICCS, many works of ICCS needs to be strengthen in the future.
1. To organize more training program on incontinence care. It is important to increase the research capabilities of medical doctors in through academic activities, education, and mutual exchanges.
2. To maximize the activities of the society by organizing various sub-committees of ICCS. So that many young members have chance to join the new committee and be active.
3. To strengthen the ties with global societies and international academic journal in incontinence area so that we can interact efficiently.
4. To pay more attention of role of transition urology in the coming years as more children with paediatric diseases become adults. It has a great opportunity to strengthen an international prestige and importance in opening to the new areas with the changing health care environment in the future.
5. To found more funds for these academic and educational activities of ICCS.
As my work combines clinical practice, research and teaching activities, I can experience the advantages and opportunities, but also the limitations and barriers possibly encountered when trying to enhance working knowledge of all things related to bladder dysfunction in a child. I therefore want to contribute to the work of the ICCS and support their fundamental goal of improving quality of life and life expectancy for all growing individuals with deficient bladder function.
Within the area of bladder dysfunction, urotherapy is a key factor in which the urotherapist has a crucial role. I would like to support and highlight this role by encouraging future developments in evaluation and training and stimulating collaboration with other health care providers.
It is important to bridge the gap between research and clinical practice, making it possible to offer feasible and sustainable evidence-based practice. As already demonstrated in the past, I believe future ICCS meetings can continue to facilitate this through communication of research results and the perfect opportunity for discussion. The ICCS could further improve a universal and constructive way of communication by publishing up-to-date standardization documents.
To achieve the goal of improving quality of life and health status of the child and the entire social environment, it is essential to share information not only between caregivers but also to the children and their support system. The ICCS has conducted initial steps to support this communication (e.g. general public leaflets and booklets) and could further explore, expand and strengthen this in the future.
- Increase efforts of Society to spread the knowledge about bladder and bowel problems in children in new areas (Eastern European Countries, Former Soviet Union Republics, Africa) – form of education could be related to resources: Educational Courses Onsite, Webinars (with subtitles in national languages), Online Courses
- Continue collaboration with main societies and Networks (European Society of Pediatric Nephrology, International Pediatric Nephrology Association, European Society of Pediatric Urology, Societies for Pediatric Urology, European Reference Center for Rare Kidney Diseases, International Continence Society) – organizing pre-congress courses about bladder and bowel problems, participating in research programs for specific diseases (PUV, neurogenic bladder ect.), participating in creation of recommendation and guidelines.
– Initiate collaboration with Patient Representatives Organizations in area of incontinence and congenital malformation of urinary tract
- Restoration of good tradition of literature update for members of Society
- Active participation in updating of standardization documents of ICCS
– Improvement of Society Web site to be more attractive to audience
I joined the ICCS with the following goals: 1) to promote education and 2) to standardize research outcomes on bladder dysfunction, particularly urodynamic findings, to improve future published research. In my clinical practice, it is not uncommon to see children with urinary incontinence who have already been evaluated and treated unsuccessfully by non-pediatric urology specialists unaware of the ICCS guidelines. The AUA Update Series is a collection of urology lessons from the American Urological Association (AUA) mostly targeted to non-pediatric urologists preparing for maintenance of certification. While an editorial board member for the AUA Update Series, I planned lessons based on ICCS guidelines on urinary incontinence and UTIs. I am also on the editorial board of the Urology Care Foundation which creates urologic patient education materials for the AUA. Although most of the focus is on adult urologic disease, there is the opportunity to update the many of the pediatric materials. This potential collaboration between the AUA and ICCS could be a way to expand availability of education to patient families and to increase ICCS exposure.
Much of my recent clinical research focuses on bladder dysfunction in the pediatric myelomeningocele population. In our multi-institutional cohort study, we quickly discovered significant variability in how the urodynamic testing was performed and in interpretation of the studies despite all sites being aware of the ICCS urodynamic guidelines. Without standardization of these bladder function outcomes, the impact of any clinical research would be limited. Additional surgical diseases such as bladder exstrophy and posterior urethral valves which assess bladder function would also benefit from standardization of outcomes. Again, ICCS could potentially assume the role to coordinate this research standardization working with groups such as the European Society for Paediatric Urology and Societies for Pediatric Urology. Increased engagement of the ICCS with active pediatric urology researchers on these topics would help achieve this goal.
