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Purpose: To create a machine-learning model for estimating the likelihood of post-retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) sepsis., Methods: All consecutive patients with kidney stone(s) only undergoing RIRS in 16 centers were prospectively included (January 2022-August 2023)., Inclusion Criteria: adult, renal stone(s) only, CT scan (within three months), mid-stream urine culture (within 10 days)., Exclusion Criteria: concomitant ureteral stone, bilateral procedures. In case of symptomatic infection/asymptomatic bacteriuria, patients were given six days of antibiotics according to susceptibility profiles. All patients had antibiotics prophylaxis. Variables selected for the model: age, gender, age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index, stone volume, indwelling preoperative bladder catheter, urine culture, single/multiple stones, indwelling preoperative stent/nephrostomy, ureteric access sheath, surgical time. Analysis was conducted using Python programming language, with Pandas library and machine learning models implemented using the Scikit-learn library. Machine learning algorithms tested: Decision Tree, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting. Overall performance was accurately estimated by K-Fold cross-validation with three folds., Results: 1552 patients were included. There were 20 (1.3%) sepsis cases, 16 (1.0%) septic shock cases, and three more cases (0.2%) of sepsis-related deaths. Random Forest model showed the best performance (precision = 1.00; recall = 0.86; F1 score = 0.92; accuracy = 0.92). A web-based interface of the predictive model was built and is available at https://emabal.pythonanywhere.com/ CONCLUSIONS: Our model can predict post-RIRS sepsis with high accuracy and might facilitate patient selection for day-surgery procedures and identify patients at higher risk of sepsis who deserve extreme attention for prompt identification and treatment., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Purpose: Hypocitraturia is a low urinary excretion of citrate and a well-known risk factor for kidney stone development in children. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the dietary management of hypocitraturia in children with urolithiasis., Methods: Literature search was performed on 30th September 2022 using Embase, PubMed, and Cochrane Central Controlled Register of Trials. Studies were included if children with stones and hypocitraturia were managed with diet supplements., Results: Six papers were included. Four studies evaluated the role of oral potassium citrate associated with high fluid intake on stone resolution and recurrence. Two studies assessed the impact of oral potassium citrate on long-term stone recurrence after percutaneous nephrolithotomy and shock wave lithotripsy. All studies demonstrated that the association of potassium citrate and high fluid intake was well tolerated with no side effects and restored normal urine citrate excretion, allowed a reduction in stone size, and, following definitive treatments, was associated with a lower rate of stone regrowth and recurrence compared with controls. These effects were demonstrated across all pediatric ages., Conclusions: Our review infers that oral potassium citrate and high fluid assumption are safe and effective in restoring urine citrate excretion, treating and preventing stone recurrence with no serious adverse events, and should probably be the first-line treatment of pediatric patients with asymptomatic stones and hypocitraturia., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Purpose: Radiomics in uro-oncology is a rapidly evolving science proving to be a novel approach for optimizing the analysis of massive data from medical images to provide auxiliary guidance in clinical issues. This scoping review aimed to identify key aspects wherein radiomics can potentially improve the accuracy of diagnosis, staging, and extraprostatic extension in prostate cancer (PCa)., Methods: The literature search was performed on June 2022 using PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central Controlled Register of Trials. Studies were included if radiomics were compared with radiological reports only., Results: Seventeen papers were included. The combination of PIRADS and radiomics score models improves the PIRADS score reporting of 2 and 3 lesions even in the peripheral zone. Multiparametric MRI-based radiomics models suggest that by simply omitting diffusion contrast enhancement imaging in radiomics models can simplify the process of analysis of clinically significant PCa by PIRADS. Radiomics features correlated with the Gleason grade with excellent discriminative ability. Radiomics has higher accuracy in predicting not only the presence but also the side of extraprostatic extension., Conclusions: Radiomics research on PCa mainly uses MRI as an imaging modality and is focused on diagnosis and risk stratification and has the best future possibility of improving PIRADS reporting. Radiomics has established its superiority over radiologist-reported outcomes but the variability has to be taken into consideration before translating it to clinical practice., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)