New and updated medical guidelines announced at AUA2024
The Annual Meeting featured a number of sessions highlighting updated guidelines or outlining new guidelines in the specialty of urology.

Guidelines have been a focal point for the AUA Annual Meeting for 119 years and counting. This year, AUA2024 offered sessions that introduced, reaffirmed or challenged new and existing guidelines.
The new Salvage Therapy for Prostate Cancer: AUA/ASTRO/SUO Guideline (2024) was unveiled during the morning Plenary on Friday, May 3. This is not a revision or an update of the prior 2013 guideline; rather, it is a new consensus document built from the ground up, said Guideline Committee Chair Todd Morgan, MD, chief of urologic oncology and the Jack Lapides, MD, Research Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
The guideline focuses on management recommendations for patients with biochemical recurrence following prostatectomy or other curative treatment. Trials have brought new recommendations for the timing and delivery of salvage therapy, risk stratification, use of androgen deprivation therapy, quality of life, molecular imaging and metastasis-directed therapy.
Jaspreet S. Sandhu, MD, urological surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, discussed key changes made to the 2021 AUA guideline on the management of lower urinary tract symptoms attributed to benign prostatic hyperplasia that were released in 2023. He also focused on what has not changed.
“The initial evaluation and approach remain the same,” Dr. Sandhu said in his presentation on the current BPH guideline amendment during the morning Plenary on Saturday, May 4. “That every patient should be counseled as an individual is extremely important. Patients should be counseled on options for intervention, including behavioral and lifestyle modifications.”
Many of the changes focus on newer techniques and technologies that were unavailable or had little evidence in prior years, but pharmacotherapy remains an early option.
Timothy McClure, MD, assistant professor of urology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, also outlined the 2023 amendment to the AUA guideline on BPH, focusing on the addition of a new approach: prostate artery embolism. The concept is simple: Inject an embolic agent into the prostatic arteries to block blood supply, shrinking the prostate to allow better urinary flow.
“PAE is a great example of urology of the future, interventional urology,” he said. “My entire practice is interventional urology.”
Dr. McClure opened the afternoon Plenary on Saturday, May 4, with an explanation of PAE and some of the clinical trials leading to its inclusion in the AUA guideline. The prior guideline, published in 2021, recommended against PAE for lack of evidence showing more benefit than risk.
For the most up-to-date resources on guidelines in urology, look to the AUA.