Dear Colleagues,

This issue marks the one-year anniversary of the founding of UroToday International Journal. When the editorial team drafted our primary goal of “elevating access to relevant urology science to professionals around the world,” we had no idea that the journal would grow so quickly.

We are excited that our dream of becoming an international journal is being realized. Over the past year, we published articles from authors in 22 countries from 4 continents. These submissions reflect the world-wide distribution of our readership.

We could not achieve this success without the dedicated work of our reviewers, who continue to provide thorough and rapid feedback to our authors. We are grateful for their professional support. Because of their efforts, manuscripts received as recently as 7 weeks ago are appearing in this issue. We continue to strive for rapid turnaround of submissions so that we can share recent developments with our readers.

We have taken advantage of the fact that we are an electronic publication by adding other forms of media to the text of some articles. We hope to expand these multimedia educational tools and encourage authors to notify us if you have podcasts, video clips, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, or audio commentary that may enhance your manuscript content. For examples, visit the audio recording of the basic science lecture in October, 2008 or the PowerPoint presentation accompanying the letter to the editor in April, 2009.

The current issue contains a wide variety of articles. Some highlights include: (1) a retrospective analysis on the effects of two dosage levels of darifenacin on 1053 patients with mild/moderate and severe urinary incontinence, written by Dr. Dmochowski and his colleagues; (2) a thorough discussion about different types of slings for correction of stress urinary incontinence, written by Dr. Farahat and his colleagues; (3) new surgical techniques for acute dilatation of the intramural ureter during ureteroscopy and for repair of distal and midpenile hypospadias, both provided by Dr. Gamal and his colleagues; (4) case reports on prostate leiomyosarcoma following radiation therapy to the prostate (Yee et al); an adenoid cystic variant of basal cell carcinoma following transurethral resection (Soloway et al); an appendicular vesical fistula (Labib and Mapulanga); a left-sided inferior vena cava in a patient with renal cell carcinoma of the right kidney (Katkoori et al); and surgical procedures to manage uterine prolapse associated with bladder exstrophy and to alleviate intractable groin pain following suburethral sling placement (Palma et al). Other articles on topics of interest to the practicing urologist and associated professionals are included.

Our heartfelt thanks go to the authors who have shared their work with us during the past year. We look forward to your future submissions as we continue to grow.

Kind regards,

K-E Andersson
Editor-In-Chief
UIJ