SIU Scholarship: Dr. Xiao Gu

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The Société Internationale d'Urologie offers Training Scholarships for young doctors with basic surgical or urological qualifications. The SIU Scholarships involve training in a recognized Urological center of excellence located in the candidate's geographical region. These SIU-accredited centers provide an excellent environment for learning and, in many instances, hands-on experience, so that candidates may acquire knowledge and skills that they will be able to transfer to their own setting of practice. In this series of short communications, SIU Scholars write about the impact that these training opportunites faciliated by the SIU had on their quality of care and career development. Information about applying for an SIU Scholarship is available at http://www.siu-urology.org/.

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• Xiao Gu, SIU Scholar

In 2006, as an awardee of an SIU scholarship, I served as a clinical research fellow in the Department of Urologic Surgery at Vanderbilt University in the United States. Under direction of its chairman, Dr. Joseph A. Smith Jr., Vanderbilt has been one of the top urology departments in the world. The faculty includes internationally recognized leaders in all the domains of urologic care who are dedicated to providing state-of-the-art medical and surgical care in all aspects of adult and pediatric urology.

With this SIU scholarship, I was allowed to observe clinical encounters and operative procedures, including adult and pediatric urology cases and kidney transplantation in the operating room. I participated in all the educational conferences, clinical rounds, and grand rounds. Additionally, I observed the Vanderbilt resident training program, which initiated our reform of urologic residency education in China. I was highly engaged during my fellowship time and had a very successful training experience.

On completion of this fellowship, I returned to my home hospital in China, the Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University, and introduced the Vanderbilt urologic experiences to my colleagues and applied their comprehensive approach to patient care. For example, for prostate cancer, we started to extensively use prostate-specific antigen screening and ultrasound-guided 12-core biopsy for patients with a suspicion of prostate cancer, as well as brachytherapy as one of the therapeutic options for appropriate patients. We have optimized the surgical procedures of open and laparoscopic prostatectomy and individualized the strategy for hormonal therapy. These novel ideas and technologies obtained at Vanderbilt have markedly improved patient care in my home hospital. Beyond the academic achievements, the SIU scholarship also gave me the opportunity to build and enhance the great friendship with American urologists.

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Dr. Xiao Gu was born on February 22, 1971 in Yangzhou, China. He obtained his medical degree in 1993 and masters of science degree in 1998, both at Nanjing Medical University, and his Ph.D. degree in 2001 at Fudan University (the former Shanghai Medical University). In 2002, he did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Florida, and in 2004-2006 he did a fellowship at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. In 2006, he received an SIU scholarship to work as a clinical research fellow at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He is currently an associate professor at Yangzhou University School of Medicine. He is a member of the SIU, the American Society of Transplantation, the Transplantation Society, the American Society of Andrology, and the Society for Vascular Medicine. He has published several articles and 4 chapters in books and serves as a reviewer for the “Journal of Urology.” His clinical experience includes renal transplantation and all types of urologic disease, including pediatric urology. He has extensive research experience in organ transplantation, as well as in cellular and molecular biology techniques for the study of immunomodulation and the mechanisms of invasiveness and metastasis of transitional cell carcinoma of bladder.