If a career in medicine hadn’t worked out for Sam Chang, he might have been a politician. As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Chang chose to major in politics instead of common premed majors such as biology or chemistry. That way, he would have the opportunity to take a spectrum of liberal arts classes, from psychology to sociology to anthropology.

A federal task force has changed its recommendation about prostate cancer screening for some older men. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) now recommends that men between the ages of 55 to 69 consult with their physicians about getting routine screening blood tests to detect prostate cancer.

David Penson, M.D., MPH, Paul V. Hamilton, M.D., and Virginia E. Howd Professor of Urologic Oncology and chair of the Department of Urologic Surgery, has been selected to chair the American Urological Association (AUA) Science & Quality Council, according to an announcement from the AUA Board of Directors.

Melissa Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Urologic Surgery, received the 2017 Zimskind Award at the Society of Urodynamics, Female Pelvic Medicine, and Urogenital Reconstruction (SUFU) Winter Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Faced with the negative quality-of-life effects from surgery and radiation treatments for prostate cancer, low risk patients may instead want to consider active surveillance with their physician, according to a study released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Vanderbilt researchers have identified a unique example of communication between bacterial signaling systems, which may have relevance for antibiotic resistance.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the world’s first site to treat a patient in the TULSA-PRO Ablation Clinical Trial (TACT), which employs an emerging therapy that uses MRI guidance and robotically driven therapeutic ultrasound to obtain precise prostate cancer tissue ablation.