Prototype of new instrumentation for non-invasive urodynamic in males: preliminary results

Nowadays, clinical investigations to understand the functionality of the lower urinary tract (LUT) are based on invasive techniques (e.g. use of catheters) for measuring intra-bladder pressure and flowmetry through urethra. These techniques can lead to significant discomfort and possible complications to patients; moreover, they represent for the health agencies an economic burden in terms of costs associated with supplies, and above all they require a great deal of personnel’s time; finally, current techniques are inadequate for urodynamic analysis in pediatric subjects. This project expands the work previously carried-out by the same research team on the analysis of the hydraulic behavior of bladder-urethra system. The research is based on i) a physical model specifically designed and assembled in our laboratory and experiments on water jets issuing from elastic tubes with similar behavior to the urethra; ii) development of mathematical models suitable to represent the complex phenomena that occur in the LUT in physiological and pathological conditions Based on the previous results, a new instrumentation for non-invasive urodynamic diagnostic was developed. This instrumentation does not have any parts in contact with the human body, moreover it is characterized by the same diagnostic reliability of the techniques in use today. The basic concept arises from considering the LUT similar to a hydraulic system consisting of a pressure feed tank (bladder) and an outlet elastic duct (urethra) whose physical behavior is governed by the laws of fluid mechanics. Starting from the knowledge of the physical quantities of the urinary jet measurable outside of the urethra it is possible to model the LUT internal urodynamic characteristics. In this report, we present the preliminary results of a clinical trial with healthy male volunteers designed to test and calibrate the diagnostic reliability of the new equipment.