Urology in Abu Dhabi
Urology covers the kidneys, bladder, prostate and urinary tract: cancer of the prostate, bladder and kidney, stone disease, prostate enlargement and the surgery that treats them. Two symptoms deserve to be acted on rather than watched — blood in the urine, and a change in urinary function that has persisted.
Conditions
Prostate health & BPH
Benign prostatic hyperplasia is a non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate that becomes common from around age 50 and causes urinary symptoms: a weak stream, hesitancy, incomplete emptying and waking at night to urinate. It is not prostate cancer, but the two can produce similar symptoms, which is why the assessment must distinguish them rather than reassure prematurely.
02Prostate cancer & PSA
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and, caught early, one of the most treatable. Most cases are found through a raised PSA in a man with no symptoms at all, which is why the decision that matters is not what to do about a diagnosis but whether to be tested in the first place — and that decision is worth making deliberately rather than by default.
03Kidney stones
Kidney stones are common in the Gulf, and the climate is part of the reason: sustained heat and inadequate fluid intake concentrate the urine, which is the condition in which stones form. Most stones can be treated without an open operation, and the part that is too often skipped is what happens afterwards — without prevention, roughly half of people who form one stone form another within a decade.
04Bladder & kidney cancer
Visible blood in the urine is the symptom that matters most in urology, because it is painless, it usually stops on its own, and it is the commonest presenting sign of bladder cancer. A single episode that resolves is still an indication for investigation. The bleeding stopping is not the problem resolving.
05Urinary tract infections
A urinary tract infection confined to the bladder — cystitis — causes burning on urination, urgency and frequency, and in an otherwise healthy, non-pregnant woman it is uncomplicated and usually resolves with a short course of the right antibiotic. Fever, flank pain, nausea or feeling systemically unwell mean the infection may have reached the kidney (pyelonephritis), which needs prompt treatment rather than the same short course. Three or more infections in a year, or two in six months, is recurrent UTI, and it is worth investigating why rather than treating each episode in isolation.
06Female incontinence
Urinary incontinence in women is not one condition but usually one of two, and telling them apart decides the treatment. Stress incontinence is leakage triggered by coughing, laughing, sneezing or exercise, caused by inadequate support of the urethra and bladder neck — it is a mechanical problem. Urgency incontinence, part of overactive bladder, is leakage that follows a sudden, hard-to-defer urge to void, caused by the bladder muscle contracting when it should not — it is a functional problem. Many women have both, which is called mixed incontinence, and it is extremely common: not a normal part of ageing to be tolerated, and treatable at every stage from physiotherapy to surgery.
07Bedwetting in children
Bedwetting below the age of five or six is normal development, not a disorder, and most children who wet the bed at that age will grow out of it without any treatment at all. Beyond that age it is called nocturnal enuresis, it is still common — affecting a meaningful share of seven-year-olds — and it is still, in the great majority of cases, a maturational delay rather than a sign that something is wrong with the child. The one thing that reliably makes it worse is blame: children do not wet the bed on purpose, and treatment starts with saying so plainly.
Procedures
Shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL)
Shockwave lithotripsy breaks a stone from outside the body, with focused acoustic waves and no incision at all. It is the least invasive stone treatment there is, and it is not the most effective one: for most stones ureteroscopy clears more of them in a single session. The trade is real and it is the whole decision — ESWL means no instrument inside you, at the cost of a lower chance of being stone-free first time and a higher chance of needing a second treatment.
09Flexible cystoscopy
Flexible cystoscopy passes a thin, bendable camera along the urethra into the bladder, with anaesthetic gel rather than an anaesthetic, in about ten minutes, and you walk out afterwards. It exists because no scan sees the inside of the bladder well enough: an ultrasound and even a CT can miss a flat tumour that a camera finds immediately. When there has been visible blood in the urine, this is the test that settles it.
10Urological ultrasound
Ultrasound is the first imaging in most urological problems because it is quick, uses no radiation and can be done in the consultation room while you are still there. It shows the kidneys, the bladder, how well the bladder empties, the prostate's size and the contents of the scrotum. What it does not show matters just as much: a normal urological ultrasound does not exclude a bladder tumour, and it misses many stones in the ureter.
11Flow rate & urodynamics
A flow rate measures how fast you pass urine; a urodynamic study measures the pressures behind it. The first takes a couple of minutes and is done at almost every visit for urinary symptoms. The second is reserved for the cases where symptoms and examination disagree, or where an operation is being planned and the surgeon needs to know whether the problem is a blocked outlet or a bladder that has stopped contracting — because the two feel identical to the patient and the operation only helps one of them.
12Endoscopic & percutaneous stone surgery
When a stone will not pass and lithotripsy is not the right answer, there are two operative routes. Ureteroscopy goes up the natural passage with a fine telescope and breaks the stone with a laser, taking the fragments out rather than leaving them to pass; percutaneous nephrolithotomy makes a track through the flank directly into the kidney, and is what large or staghorn stones need. Both are keyhole operations with no open incision, and which one applies is decided by the size and position of the stone, not by preference.
13Laparoscopic surgery
Laparoscopic surgery reaches the kidney, prostate or bladder through several small incisions instead of one long one. The operation performed inside is the same operation; what changes is the trauma of getting there — less blood loss, less pain, a shorter stay and a faster return to normal activity. What it does not change is that the decision to operate has to be right in the first place.
About Dr. Juan Uría
Dr. Juan Uría González-Tova is a Consultant Urologist and Andrologist at NMC Royal Hospital, Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi, with over 30 years of clinical practice. He gained his medical degree at the University of Oviedo and his PhD at the University of Barcelona, and has practised in Abu Dhabi since 2018. Consultations are held in English, Spanish or Catalan.
Book a consultation
Consultations take place at NMC Royal Hospital, Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi, in English, Spanish or Catalan.
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