Dr. Das on his experience with HoLEP for treating BPH

In this video, Akhil Das, MD, FACS, discusses his experience with holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP). Das is a UCI Health urologist and a professor of urology at UCI School of Medicine.

Transcription:

Could you describe your experience with HoLEP?

HoLEP started back in 1998. I happened to start it back then, so I was one of the first ones to ever do HoLEP. So as far as learning curve for me, it has been easier because I started right from the beginning. We've been developing different techniques in HoLEP. But there is a steep learning curve...By around 2007-2008, we got a lot of work done, and as we started finding out, it's probably the best procedure for BPH surgically, hands down, for any size, and has the [largest] amount of data for that procedure - up to 25 years out now. The learning curve is a challenge. We've been addressing the learning curve in different ways. We started back in the early 2000s. We started doing different types of teaching courses and never quite came out. But now as we've progressed, we've gotten into these special virtual models and models that are made out of materials that are very similar to prostate tissue. We use real scopes, and we really are working on the learning curve. We've developed a course here, a HoLEP master class course that we've done for 2 years already, that has international expert faculty that helps teach the procedure. Each of the participants get a long time on the model, like 3 hours. So [we're] really seeing the learning curve sort of shift a little bit. We're doing a lot more proctoring and as you know, we're trying to get it to more institutions, and you really learn as a resident if you can. That's the goal.

This transcription was edit4ed for clarity.