Israel Franco, MD

University of Tennessee College of Medicine Chattanooga

Professor of Urology

Israel Franco, MD is a Pediatric urologist with 30 years’ experience in the field. . He is fellowship trained At Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, now the Lurie Children’s Hospital. Dr Franco has been an early innovator in neurourology to fill a knowledge gap in the field. His work since a 2007 Journal of Urology article that pointed that pediatric voiding dysfunction and incontinence is most likely related to problems in the central nervous system has been validated over the years.
Dr. Franco has published over 100 articles in peer reviewed journals and contributed 19 chapters for textbooks in the field of pediatric urology and neurology. He was the lead editor of a new textbook on Pediatric Urinary Incontinence published by Blackwell publishing this October and has contributed to Swaiman’s pediatric neurology textbook.
He was the treasurer and board member of the International Children’s Continence Society, which plays a vital role in the education of physicians, nurses, and physiotherapist in the care of children’s urinary and bowel continence issues. Dr. Franco has been an invited speaker in ten countries aside from numerous speaking invitations in the United States. Some of his publications have led to fundamental changes in the management of children with incontinence. a Recent fMRI work on the method of how electrical stimulation works to treat bladder overactivity further supports his theories regarding urinary dysfunction in children. His work has been focused on quantitating urodynamics and uroflowmetry in children to allow for standardization of those studies. Recent work on large NIH database has been able to map sites in the brain in children with urinary incontinence and nocturnal enuresis.