Notable Events in Department of Urology History

The department’s list of milestones and achievements ranges from early discoveries to a rising national reputation to the latest strategies in academic medicine and statewide delivery of care. 

Highlights include:

1930
Dr. Alcock serves as secretary of the urology section of the American Medical Association and arranges a presentation of the pioneering work of Moses Swick on the first intravenous contrast media at the AMA’s meeting in Detroit.

1931–53
In a series of advances, Dr. Alcock helps to pioneer the technique of transurethral resection of the prostate, culminating in his study demonstrating that the procedure reduces deaths from 26% to less than 7% compared to open prostatectomy.

1937-38
Dr. Flocks describes the arterial blood supply to the human prostate and the healing process after transurethral resection of the prostate.

1939
Resident physician Milo Ellik develops the Ellik evacuator, a device for removing tissue sections during transurethral prostatectomy and other procedures that remains in use by urologists to this day.

1952
Dr. Flocks reports the successful treatment of prostate cancer using radioactive gold.

1953
Dr. Raymond Bunge develops the glycerol medium for preserving sperm, leading to the creation of the world’s first sperm bank.

1959–61
Dr. Culp supervises clinical trials of the earliest closed drainage systems.

1963–68
Dr. Flocks serves as president of the American Board of Urology.

1964–68
Dr. Dorothy Kelley Brandon is the first woman to serve a urology residency at the University of Iowa.

1968–69
Dr. Flocks serves as president of the American Urological Association.

1973–74
Dr. Culp serves as president of the North Central Section of the American Urological Association.

1974
Dr. Charles Hawtrey becomes the first pediatric urologist in the state of Iowa.

1981–82
Dr. Culp serves as president of the American Urological Association.

1990–91
Dr. Hawtrey serves as president of the North Central Section of the American Urological Association.

1992
Dr. Howard Winfield performs the world’s first laparoscopic partial nephrectomy.

1998–99
Dr. Williams serves as president of the North Central Section of the American Urological Association.

2007–08
Dr. Christopher S. Cooper develops the first machine-learning neural networks that incorporate multiple individual variables to predict vesicoureteral reflux resolution.

2009
Dr. Williams earns the American Urological Association’s Hugh Hampton Young Award for his contributions to urology as an educator and advocate for research, his work as a member of the Journal of Urology editorial board, and his medical volunteerism in Haiti.

2009
Dr. Kreder secures the department’s largest clinical trial grant to date—the $5 million, NIH-funded Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain (MAPP).

2010–15
The department expands access to its expert adult and pediatric urological care by establishing outreach locations across the state of Iowa and to the newly opened UI Health Care Iowa River Landing location in Coralville, Iowa.

2013–14
Dr. Cooper serves as president of the North Central Section of the American Urological Association.

2015
The Department of Urology celebrates the centennial of its outstanding service to Iowa and the world.

2015
Dr. Michael A. O’Donnell and colleagues report on the successful use of a novel regimen of sequential doses of gemcitabine and docetaxel (gem-doce) to treat non-muscle invasive bladder cancer in patients who had failed multiple courses of BCG and were candidates for radical cystectomy. Later studies further demonstrate the promise of gem-doce and other multi-agent intravesical treatments as viable replacements for BCG, which is in a long-term shortage worldwide.

2017
Dr. Chad R. Tracy leads a successful multidisciplinary effort to make UI Health Care the first center in Iowa to offer MRI-ultrasound fusion guided prostate biopsy.

2018
Dr. Bradley A. Erickson is awarded an NIH-funded grant to study the role of inflammation in urethral stricture disease, with the goal of exploring potential targets for nonsurgical treatment of stricture.

2019
Dr. Cooper receives the Societies for Pediatric Urology Clinical Research Prize for developing and patenting home monitors for bladder pressure and bladder volume developed to help children with neurogenic bladder avoid decline in bladder function and kidney injury.

2020
Dr. Erickson receives a grant from the Veterans Health Administration to study the development of a telehealth model to ensure continuity of care for rural veterans who have prostate cancer but have difficulty accessing quality care.

2021
Dr. Kenneth G. Nepple receives the Excellence in Quality Award from the UI Physicians group for his lead role in improving UI Health Care’s workflow for identifying and documenting malnutrition in patients, an effort that was spurred by Dr. Nepple’s extensive prior investigation of the under-diagnosis of malnutrition in patients at academic medical centers across the nation.

2023–24
Dr. Elizabeth B. Takacs is the first woman to serve as president of the North Central Section of the American Urological Association.