Reply by authors

摘要

We acknowledge the study by Namiki et al and believe their findings are complementary to ours. The body of literature on urinary function after treatment for prostate cancer is substantial, and there are many interesting studies that we were not able to cite in our article. However, while Namiki et al, like many others, identified a single longitudinal trend among all patients, we used a novel method to identify distinct patterns of urinary function recovery within our longitudinal data set. We believe this is a more powerful technique for detecting trends in longitudinal data and identifying patient variables associated with specific outcomes. Now that age and number of medical comorbidities are known to be associated with recovery of urinary function after radical prostatectomy for men within and outside the United States, we should continue to focus our efforts on preoperative counseling and setting reasonable patient expectations.