Dr. Joshua Sterling

you know, proposing some trials to move forward for it.

And this is another space where computer bioinformatics and modeling can really help.

You know, if you know the ratio of the bacteria that are in there and kind of see, you know, when does it, where is the tipping point where suddenly you're going to go from, you know, that mixed culture to something that's virulence.

So it is definitely kind of a new frontier and coming closer.

The closest kind of conclusive data is actually in the gynecology world.

They've kind of looked at what is the microbiome in the vaginal canal and how does that impact somebody's UTIs.

And so kind of that interplay between the vaginal flora and the urinary microbiome.

But there hasn't been anything concrete in the urology literature.

When I was early in training, someone told me you got to steal like an artist, you know, read what other specialties are doing and see is there a urology paper on it and kind of take that and go with it.

I think medicine has become very siloed.

And so it's very easy just to, you know, think about what we do.

And even within subspecialties, you're like, you know, just kind of

focus in the recon world, but, you know, talking to the oncologists about what they're doing, talking to the stone guys going outside of it.

You know, I think that's really where those ideas and kind of practice changing patterns can really come from.

You know, if some other reconstructive guy is telling you, you know, this is what I do and this works, it's like,

okay, you know, that's what you do.

That's cool.

But if you look and you realize that all of orthopedics is doing this, you know, suddenly it just, it has a little more weight and it doesn't have the bias that we can have when we're just talking about our own field and our own society.

I think the future is bright, actually, for this.

I think the fact that we're talking about this, the quick, rough PubMed search and just looked at a number of publications, and it is a line that's going out.