Renown Health’s chief clinical research officer works with colleagues to elevate research’s impact on clinical care, including in his own field of urology.
Renown Health is committed to bringing leading-edge technology to northern Nevada and pushing the frontiers of medicine through clinical research. In December 2024, Renown Health became the first health system in the region to offer da Vinci SP (single-port) robotic surgery. This technology allows surgeons to perform minimally invasive robotic procedures through a one-and-a-half–inch to two-inch incision instead of multiple incisions, leading to less pain, scarring and blood loss — all of which contribute to a faster recovery.
“For prostate surgeries, because we’re operating through a narrow slot, we can stay out of the abdominal cavity,” says Eric Kim, MD, division chief of urology at Renown Health. “Working in this narrow space instead of the broader space of the abdomen has advantages in terms of injury risk and bowel-related morbidity from surgery.”
Eric Kim, MD, division chief of Urology at Renown Health, views his role as chief clinical research officer as a bridge builder. His goal: to span the divide between research and patient care by creating a translational research center at the University of Nevada, Reno. There, clinicians and researchers will work to take medical advances from bench to bedside.
“As an academic surgeon/scientist, my duty to patients doesn’t just include the patients I see today,” Dr. Kim says. “It also includes the patients of tomorrow. If we’re not thinking about future patients, we’re doing a disservice to the concept of patient care.”
Plenty of future patients stand to benefit from the urological research underway at Renown Health.
Renown Health is the first location in the U.S. to conduct a feasibility study of histotripsy to treat prostate tumors. This noninvasive treatment uses high-powered ultrasound waves to destroy tissue.
Dr. Kim and colleagues are investigating the effectiveness of having primary care providers (PCPs) gauge the likelihood of aggressive prostate cancer after a patient receives abnormal prostate cancer screening results. To assess the risk, they would use a commercially available blood test called the 4Kscore Test that evaluates for biomarkers of the disease.
“After patients receive abnormal prostate cancer screening reports from tests with their PCPs, their care has traditionally been turned over to urologists,” Dr. Kim says. “We’re making this new test available to PCPs so they can see how effective it is. This will be interesting and potentially game-changing in terms of how we screen for prostate cancer in this country.”
