At last, a seasoned urologist provides clear, comprehensive, no-nonsense explanations for patients’ most vexing health conditions:

• burning sensations
• pelvic pain
• chronic cystitis
• bladder infections
• erectile dysfunction
• elevated PSA
• prostatic obstruction
• prostatitis
• kidney stones
• prostate cancer
• Peyronie's Disease
• stress incontinence

From the annoying symptoms of bladder infections to life-threatening urologic concerns, 21st century medicine offers remarkable new technologies as viable solutions to age-old problems. Advances in developing minimally invasive techniques for treatment have dramatically reduced patient pain and increased ease of recovery for many urologic conditions

With intelligence, candor and humor, Dr. Jack Cassell describes in detail the symptoms, dangers and modern treatment options for common health concerns troubling to millions of patients.

An accomplished urologist, recognized innovator, and compassionate physician, Dr. Cassell is solution-driven and advocates for the best care technology and right-minded providers can deliver. He also offers his own professional perspective on the challenges in managed health care as physicians work to hold up their end in a faltering system, which ultimately affects patients and consumers most dramatically.

Better Living Through Urology: 21st Century Solutions to Age-Old Problems is a valuable and welcome resource for patients and clinicians alike.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Dedication


• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
  1. URINE PRODUCTION AND INCONTINENCE: Don’t Void Where Prohibited.
  2. CHRONIC CYSTITIS: No, Ladies, you’re not crazy.
  3. HEMATURIA: If you close your eyes, it doesn’t go away.
  4. UROLOGIC OFFICE TESTS: Are they always necessary?
  5. KIDNEY STONES: Modern ways to sidestep an age-old misery.
  6. THE ERECTION: Take a long, hard look.
  7. PEYRONIE'S DISEASE & THE PENIS: Help is just around the bend.
  8. MINIMALLY INVASIVE TECHNIQUES: Finally, the future is here!
  9. THE PROSTATE: The second most misunderstood organ.
  10. PSA: Your life depends on your knowing more than your doctor.
  11. CHRONIC PROSTATITIS:
        If diagnosed, you probably won’t be treated correctly.
  12. PROSTATE CANCER: All the fine points on a platter.
  13. MANAGED CARE AND THE UROLOGIC PATIENT:
        Don't believe the media, here's the real story.
  
• Index
• Glossary
• About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graduating from Rutgers College in New Brunswick,
New Jersey with a B.A. in Microbiology in 1976,
Dr. Cassell remained in town employed at New Jersey Dairy Laboratory as a food chemist. There he remained until matriculating into the 1978 class at St. George's University School of Medicine in Grenada, West Indies. Becoming increasingly tired of the near-perfect weather and magical surrounding over the next five years,
Dr. Cassell thought it best to return to New Jersey. There, he would often shovel his less than dependable car out of what seemed like glaciers during the winter months, only to drive twenty miles to one of Newark's many inner-city hospitals. For the next five years, “Jack,” as he was called around the hospital, honed his clinical skills during the usual 36 hour periods on call while attending to thousands of victims of “drug deals gone bad.” Despite the many adverse factors that affected the author during his urologic surgery residency, he generally managed to keep a bright outlook via denial and emotional repression, much of which has not resurfaced as of this writing.

Vowing never to practice in the north, unless mandated by a court of law, Dr. Cassell accepted a urologic oncology fellowship at the University of Florida in 1987. Initially lulled into a sense of well-being by Gainesville’s lack of nightly gunshot victims and snowstorms, “Jack” gleefully embraced the new position he had with Dr. Zev Wajsman, as this gifted professor’s sole protégé. What at first seemed to mark the end of Dr. Cassell’s training, ala “the Manchurian Candidate method” back in Jersey, was in retrospect, more like a warm up for things to come. As luck would have it, Dr. Wajsman was rumored to have been an Israeli drill sergeant before becoming a physician, and, therefore, more than capable in his ability to provide Dr. Cassell with a few “finishing touches,” during his last affiliation with the academic community.

Bidding Shands a fond, “Shalom!” our author found his way to Lake County, Florida in 1988, to treat the good people of the area. Jack got privileges at Waterman Medical Center, the community hospital he still calls home, though it was recently renamed after being assumed by a local hospital system. In 1995 Dr. Cassell served as Chief of Surgery at Waterman. It was also around that time that he and several others attempted over a several year period to create a medical insurance product in the state unlike any other before it. The goal was to form a physician and hospital owned HMO, in which the smallest possible profit would be realized, allowing for more money to go back for the provision of healthcare. The Physician Hospital Corporation, as it was called, was complete in the physician arm, with several counties of doctors united and ready to go with both moral and financial support. Had a strong hospital partner felt the same dedication, it is Dr. Cassell’s feeling that no other HMO would have possibly been able to compete with the healthcare products it offered. After all, traditional HMOs have to turn a profit for their investors!

Our author has dabbled in many exciting projects over the last few years. It is our understanding that every week he would spend a few spare hours trying to capture the true flavor and content of his urologic office experiences on paper. Besides pounding out this entertaining and informative book, Dr. Cassell was actively inventing a urologic device to aid in reanastamosing a patient’s bladder and urethra once the cancerous prostate is removed. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Jack a patent for this exciting device on Decemeber 23, 2003. Several medical corporations are presently examining its possible applications in and out of the field of urology.

Approaching the point of having a full plate, Dr. Cassell has energetically amassed a huge collection of unique and interesting objects over the last fifteen years. Forming a prop house, these accent pieces are now offered for movie and event rental. We understand that he has a one-man submarine, a “moon pod,” and about a thousand other things just as interesting. As a business member of the Set Decorators Society of America, Jack went out to Hollywood last September to represent his prop house, “Demented Drek” and to get to know the designers who might use his pieces!

Dr. Cassell has resided for the last eleven years in rural Lake County, Florida in a farmhouse built in the late 1800s. Tucked away by one of the remaining orange groves in the area, the extra buildings that once housed farm equipment, truly afford him the room needed to house a prop house’s inventory. This secluded backdrop not only provides our author the elbow room he needs to embark on one project after another, it also keeps would be neighbors a bit happier!