Description
Join Dr. Marcelo Bigarella, a fellowship-trained urologic oncology surgeon at UAMS, as he shares his passion for treating cancers within the genitourinary system — including prostate, kidney, bladder, testicular, and other rare cancers. Discover how cutting-edge techniques like robotic surgery are transforming cancer care, shortening recovery times, and helping patients return to their normal lives faster. Dr. Bigarella discusses his focus on complex kidney cancer surgeries and how his approach combines innovative surgical techniques with curative intent — challenging the common myths about cancer and quality of life. Learn why he chose this path and how he’s dedicated to helping patients stay cancer-free for decades.
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Transcript
My name is Marcelo Bigarella. I’m a fellowship trained urological oncology surgeon here at UAMS. I chose urological oncology because I think it combines two fields that are really close together surgery and research in oncology. As a urologic oncologist surgeon I treat cancers within the genitourinary system meaning cancers within the urinary system like prostate like kidney cancer and bladder cancer but also men’s reproductive cancer such as prostate cancer. These three cancers are the most common conditions I see in my clinic but also do see some rare cancers within those genitourinary system such as penile cancer, testicular cancer and adrenal cancer. One area that I’m particularly interested in is kidney
cancer surgery and managing patients with more advanced tumors, complex kidney cancer surgeries, and all sorts of different procedures related to kidney cancer care. One thing we can do, we can offer a tailored approach to the surgery using the most advanced techniques we have such as
robotic surgery. Not all places they have access to robotic surgery and not all cases are amendable for robotic surgeries but we try to use as much as we can because we know the recovery time for those patients are much shorter so they are able to get back to their normal lives faster once we
adopt those more minimally invasive techniques into our practice and that’s something we can and we are trying to do more and more with all the cancers within my field – prostate cancer, bladder cancer testicular cancer, kidney cancer because we know the the recovery time is much
faster. And there are a lot of medical myths associated with oncology not only
urology oncology but oncology in general and the most common one is the patients with cancer they
have a poor quality of life and sometimes it’s very hard to beat cancer and that’s not true in
my area I chose urological oncology because most of the cancers I treat with surgery, I treat with
a curative intent. I want to make sure patients are cancer free for decades ahead of them.
