Jul
19
RETROPUBIC PROSTATECTOMY w5tbpqac7u
In this surgery the same type incision is made as in the suprapubic operation. The muscle is separated and the sac containing the intestines is moved away from the bladder.
Now the surgeon makes an incision into the prostate capsule and removes the enlarged gland. The tissue removed is tested by a pathologist to determine if there is any cancerous growths present.
Now the surgeon sutures or cauterizes the bleeding vessels and the catheter with the three way tube is placed into the bladder. This catheter is usually the same type as used in a TURP operation. Next the balloon is inflated to keep the catheter in place.
All that is left is for the surgeon to “close”. The prostate capsule is sutured shut and the muscles, fascia and skin are put back in place and stitched closed.
This operation differs from the previous one since the bladder itself was not opened. It’s slightly simpler with less violation of the body. This means there is no need for the second catheter through the belly to drain the bladder.
The draining and irrigation of the prostate needed can be done with the usual three-way catheter. Most urologists say that this operation is less stressful to the patient since the bladder is not cut open, so it doesn’t have to recover.
General recovery procedures and time is about the same for either type of operation. Which type your urologist might suggest would be determined by the individual patient’s condition and sometimes the doctor’s preference.
In surgery for the prostate, the general rule is that a medium sized enlarged prostate and smaller ones can be successfully removed by the TURP method. However when the gland swells in size to over fifty to sixty grams, the urologist will usually do one of the other operations because of the difficulty in scraping out that much tissue and drawing it out of the urethra.
In these cases the larger prostate removal by the retropubic or suprapubic is simply the most efficient method to be used for the well being of the patient.
OTHER TYPES OF PROSTATE SURGERY
Perinea) prostatectomy is another kind of open surgery for the prostate but it is seldom used today. This procedure is quick and simple to do, but almost always severs the nerve bundles that control erection and leaves the patient Impotent.
Doctors back in the 1930’s often used a two stage operation for the prostate. The first stage was opening and draining the bladder. Then two weeks later they would go in and remove the prostate. It is seldom used today.
With the new treatments now coming into focus for the prostate, particularly BPH, there may be a general slowing in the number of surgeries needed. Any surgery has risks but with the prostate the risks seem to be reasonable in regards to impotence and incontinence, the two problems most men fear the most.
With the development of the new drugs, we may see products that will cause the enlarged prostate to shrink without objectionable side effects. With the increased use of the balloon as at least a temporary treatment for BPH, and other inventive methods, some experts are predicting that the use of surgery will not be required as often in future years as it is today. Only time will tell. As the public learns more about the male prostate and BPH, more men will demand non-intrusive treatments whenever possible. Right now a lot of men are hanging their hopes on the new drugs Hytrin and Proscar.
Jul
11
PROSTATITIS: LASER MINOR SURGERY AND OTHER NON MAJOR SURGICAL APPROACHES.
July 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment
LASER MINOR SURGERY
Yes, the laser is now finding its way into prostatic surgery. For some patients the balloon treatment doesn’t open the urethra enough. To help these patients, Dr. Roger S. Warner, a urologist at New York University in Manhattan, wields his laser to remove some of the offending tissue around the urethra, and then follows that up with the use of the balloon dilation. Dr. Warner said this treatment helped twenty-five out of twenty-nine patients treated.
Other doctors say that laser surgery, first used in medicine in the 1970’s, is only scratching the surface of its potential. In the future they say there will be a much greater use of the laser. Lasers can also be used to vaporize benign and malignant growths, and it’s all done quickly and simply without the patient trauma of an open surgery.
The role of laser surgery in urology is limited but it has a great potential. Dr. Israel Barken, a urologist in private practice in San Diego, and a researcher at University of California at San Diego Medical School, has a patent on a device to use in laser surgery of the prostate.
Intrasonix Company from Boston in conjunction with the Lahey clinic has developed a new device by the name of TULIP. They have used it in operations on 25 dogs so far with promising results.
In the future, from mid 1990, you may wish to ask your urologist about the possibility of having laser surgery by your urologist. Right now it’s still experimental, but work is going on in three places aroud the world.
OTHER NON MAJOR SURGICAL APPROACHES
Dr. Terrence R. Malloy, chief of urology at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, attacks the enlarged prostate tissue with ultrasound waves. The tissue is turned into a pulp and dislodged and then sucked out of the body by an aspirator.
Some research is now being done with microwaves. They are aimed directly at the enlarged prostate. Testing is now underway to see what results are of attempts to shrink the enlarged prostate tissue, thereby relieving the pressure on the urethra.
Another experimental type of minor surgery is the use of cryogenics. This utilizes a probe through the penis and urethra and into the heart of the enlarged prostate. The probe then releases liquid nitrogen into the enlarged tissue.
This intensely cold fluid freezes and shrinks the tissue and destroys it which relieves the pressure on the urethra. More experiments and results of this type of cryosurgery will be reported in the first half of the 1990’s we are sure.
Another new development in the opening of the urethra through the prostate is the insertion of a spring like spiral device that mechanically keeps the urethra open. This is a new technique and while some urologists have the springs available and can insert them, we expect much development in this area of the open urethra in the coming years.
Jul
10
NON MAJOR-SURGICAL BPH TREATMENTS
July 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment
NON MAJOR-SURGICAL w5tbpqac7u
BPH TREATMENTS
Remember our typical early BPH patient example? Well your clock has swept around and you’re now 63, your minor BPH symptoms are more severe. You can’t get through a night without getting up three or four times to urinate. Everytime you wake up you leap out of bed and rush to the bathroom.
During the day you’ve had to hold up a board meeting while you went to the toilet. You can’t take a car drive of more than an hour without stopping. On your business flights you always get an aisle seat so you can hurry to the cramped convenience two or three times during a flight.
Besides that, sometimes it hurts like outrageous sin.
So, you go back to see your urologist. For the past eight years he’s been “monitoring” your BPH. At every examination he assures you that there are no hard lumps or irregular growth of the two side prostate lobes. He says that means you probably don’t have prostatic cancer.
What happens next? You want some relief, you want to feel better and be able to lead a more normal life. It’s a quality of life situation you’re talking about and you want some help, now!
Your urologist agrees and the two of you sit down to talk about the possible ways that your situation can be eased.
You realize that once the prostate starts to grow, nothing we know of now will stop it, except total sterilization. That’s out. What other remedies are there?
THE BALLOON METHOD
One of the new treatments now getting wider acceptance is the use of a balloon. Urologists have borrowed this technique from the heart surgeons. The physician inserts a small tube about the size of spaghetti into the urethra. On the far end of the tube is an un-inflated balloon.
When the balloon is in the proper position in the urethra within the enlarged prostate, the physician inflates the balloon. This inflation is held for different lengths of time. Some urologists use a ten minute period of pressure by the balloon within the urethra to force the urethra to expand back to its original position.
This forces the prostate tissues outward. In some cases the outer casing of the prostate is “cracked” or broken to allow the enlarged prostatic tissue to move in that direction and eliminate the pressure on the urethra.
Just who first developed this technique is not known, but Dr. Flavin Castaneda, a radiologist at St. Francis Medical Center at the University of Illinois in Peoria, is one of the pioneers in the use of this new technique. He says that seventy-five percent of the BPI I patients he has used the balloon treatment on have been symptom free for up to three years after the treatment.
In another part of the country, more than 60 patients have been treated with the balloon dilation method at the University of Minnesota.
For eighty percent of these patients the urination problem was eliminated or significantly eased. This was for patients with enlargement of the side lobes of the prostate. When the narrowing of the urethra was because of enlargement of the middle lobe, the success rate dropped to thirty to forty percent.
Dr. Israel Barken, a urologist in San Diego, California, has been using the balloon treatment.
He says for this procedure the patient is tranquilized and the urethra is numbed with a local anesthetic. Then a thin, flexible tube with a balloon on the tip is inserted into the urethra and guided to the narrowed portion. The balloon is then inflated. He says he uses a time of about 20 minutes. This is an outpatient treatment and no hospitalization is needed. If the patient wants the procedure done in the office or the hospital, he can be accomodated.
Dr. Barken says before this procedure is undertaken, tests are made to assess the extent of the obstruction and to determine its precise location. At this point other tests are done to be sure there is no cancer present or any prostatic infection.
A catheter is left in the bladder until the following morning and then removed.
Dr. Lester A. Klein, an urologist at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California says that at first the balloon treatment was effective on only about thirty percent of the cases. But now with doctors screening out the patients with poor chances for success with the balloon dilation, Dr. Klein says there is a success rate of eighty-six percent.
Dr. Klein is the designer of one of the balloon devices used in the operation and does the procedure himself at Scripps.
Dr. Barken has developed a similar technique using the same principles as Dr. Klein, but without the use of the sophisticated multiple balloons. This helps bring the cost down tremendously.
At this point in mid 1990, urologists who use the balloon technique have praise for it. They say it is effective, and is easy to do with the least amount of stress and worry on the patient. It is non-surgical, and as of yet, there have been no side effects reported. These three factors make it a favorite with patients as well especially when contrasted with surgery.
Another factor is the cost. While few hard figures are obtainable, one Boston urologist said the average total cost for a balloon dilation in the hospital is about $3,600. For the same TURP operation the cost is about $12,000. TURP surgery is one of the operations that remove part or all of the growth in the prostate.
A medical writer in the Wall Street Journal estimated that more than 2,000 of these balloon treatments have been done. A CBS news report about the same procedure said that over 5,000 of them have been undertaken in the past two years.
Not everyone agrees with the use of the balloon dilation treatment. Dr. John W. Schumacher, M.D. from Minneapolis says that this ignores the 10 percent of those who do get a TURP operation and the pathologist find that they have prostate cancer as well. Dr. Schumacher says that if a hundred thousand balloon treatments are used for BPH, then ten thousand of those men who have Stage A or B Cancer won’t find out about it — perhaps until it’s too late to cure them.
Dr. William J. Somers, M.D., a urologist, agrees. He puts hidden cancer of BPH patients at twenty to twenty-five percent.
He says that the use of the balloon dilation or drugs to reduce BPH symptoms is actually doing those twenty-five percent of the patients with hidden cancer a disservice. Other experts say these hidden cancers are rarely fatal in nature.
He maintains that there is no accurate way of determining who has prostate cancer and who doesn’t. Biopsy and ultrasound can help, but he says unless shavings of the gland are examined in a pathology laboratory, the cancer can metastasize and no one will know about it until it’s too late.
Dr. Walter Desmond, Jr. Ph.D. and research manager at Hybritech in San Diego has a slightly different view of the evaluation of the scrapings from a TURP operation. His firm makes a test called the PSA to evaluate the prostate specific antigen level in the blood. A high level can indicate the strong possibility of a silent cancer in the prostate.
He says that some pathologists fail to examine all of the tissue taken out during a TURP operation. Those who don’t evaluate all of the scrapings are shortchanging the patient.
He says the odds are even greater that a hidden cancer may be missed because a proper TURP cuts out the central part of the prostate tissue. The great majority of small cancers start not at the center of the prostate but near or on the surface of the lobes of the prostate, and these areas are often never touched by the surgeon’s electric knife when he cuts out the new canal for the urine to pass through.
Dr. Desmond seems to be saying that if pathologists are finding small cancers in the ten percent, or as high as 30 percent by some scientific evaluations of the TURP scrapings, then the true figure must be much higher than that taking into consideration the two factors presented here.
His slant seems to be that a chemical test such as PSA offers a much better method to detect early prostate cancer than any other method.
Jul
7
HOW TO COPE WITH EARLY BPH. LIVING WITH BPH. Early Stages of an Enlarged Prostate.
July 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment
HOW TO COPE
WITH EARLY BPH
Living with the early stages of an enlarged prostate isn’t all that hard:
This is true. Remember, you had BPH for eight to ten years before it caused you any problems at all. You might have had some mild symptoms for another two or three years before you realized it and found out what was causing them. Now you know.
Now is no time to panic. So these problems caused by BPH area small inconvenience, they are something you can learn to live with. The alternative is not a happy thought.
Let’s go back to our typical case history. This gentleman is the one who is sixty years old and has the three most minor of BPH symptoms: a brief hesitancy when urinating, a slower, less forceful stream, and he usually gets up once a night to urinate.
The secret here is that you know what the cause is of these minor problems, which means you can learn to manage them. You have managed a lot of things in your life, right? First the other kids in your family, then a wife, then your own kids, then that business and all the people you had under you. Compared to that, managing early BPH is a breeze.
First the worry. The experts say again and again that BPH is not cancer, has no connection with prostate cancer, does not lead to cancer and is an entirely separate ailment. So get that out of your mind.
You don’t have prostate cancer, it’s only BPH.
Urologists fight this misconception all the time and gradually they’re winning. They point out that cancer of the prostate is almost always on the outside of the prostate lobes. The enlarged prostate grows inward and outward. There is absolutely no casual relationship between the two.
Now, one more concern with prostate cancer. When surgery is needed for BPH, usually at a much later time than in a man’s fifties or early sixties, there is a finding that about ten percent of the BPH prostates will be found to have a cancer.
Remember, cancer can strike any part of the body at any time in life. It has no connection to BPH. When these cancers are found they are not in the usual places where they could be easily diagnosed during your regular BPH exams. So in reality the BPH surgery is a stroke of luck since most of these cancers are just beginning and are caught quickly so they can be eradicated more easily.
So, from here on we don’t worry about BPH causing or being tied in with prostate cancer in any way. Clear?
LIVING WITH BPH
Urologists point out that the minor symptoms of BPH, often the initial ones, may be the only troubles a man suffers with BPH for as much as ten to fifteen years. That means you shouldn’t even be thinking about or concerned with any worry about prostate surgery or other treatment now. Dump it right out of your computer memory hard disc. Why worry about something that isn’t going to happen for ten to fifteen years? You’ll have plenty of time to fret and stew about it and discuss it with your urologist when the time comes. By then some even better treatments undoubtedly will be developed.
Concentrate on today, and how to make your life pleasant and interesting and fulfilling, right now! in spite of BPH.
We know that there is no “cure” for BPH. You can’t take a pill and like a headache your BPH will just go away. It isn’t that kind of a problem. Even with our miracle modern medical cures, there is nothing even on the drawing boards that will magically cure BPH. So we practice positive thinking and forget about that and move on to areas of behavior that we can and should do something about.
Plain old fashioned horse-sense. With the decline of the horse as the basic transportation unit of Americans, not much is heard anymore about horse-sense. Too bad. Horse sense has shaken down to “common sense”, which is almost as good.
For example, it makes no sense to drink two gallons of water a day when you know you’re going to have to urinate most of that water the same day. Don’t overload your urinary system. The less you drink the less you’ll have to urinate.
Don’t carry this to extremes. The body is at least 1,259 percent water. You need water, fluids, to survive. But there is a happy medium. Some doctors say a man should drink eight, eight ounce glasses of water a day. That’s half a gallon. Actually what they mean is that the body should intake that much fluid a day: coffee, water, milk, soup, colas, juice, any fluid should count.
Many other doctors say this is much more fluid than the average man needs. Your body will tell you when it wants a drink. As a common sense living-with-BPH, start cutting down on your fluids a little at a time. You’ll be urinating less, but still enough. Talk to your urologist or doctor about this and find out what the minimum daily need is for intake fluids for a man of your size and activity. It may be much less than you suspect.
If you do manual labor in the hot sun all day, you’ll need more water than if you’re in an air-conditioned office where you work on a computer. Your doctor will be able to help you here.
TIME YOUR FLUID INTAKE
If nocturia bothers you, and you’re getting up three times a night to urinate, try limiting your fluid intake in the evening. One doctor suggested not to drink any fluids for four hours before retiring. That way your body will have processed your fluids, and passed them well before your sleeping time.
Using a modified system such as this (some men have one small drink at dinner and nothing after that) many BPH patients can cut to once their nocturnal urination. Now that is a real blessing if you can go from three risings to only one a night. This is a prime example of how you can manage your own life to reduce the interference of BPH with your normal activities.
Jul
7
WHAT PROBLEMS CAN EXTREME PROSTATE
ENLARGEMENT CAUSE?
Silent Prostatism. Sometimes the prostate will enlarge and there are none of the usual symptoms. The urethra continues to close but somehow the man simply doesn’t realize the problem or decides that he’s just getting old and the “water works” sometimes doesn’t work right for him.
If this condition builds and builds, more and more urine can be left in the bladder that can’t be expelled in urination. This can result in a serious problem. The patient will become excessively tired and feel weak, he will be irritable and could suddenly collapse or even lapse into a coma.
When large amounts of urine are left in the bladder and it isn’t strong enough to expel the liquid through a narrowing urethra, serious damage can occur. This can lead to a serious backflow pressure of the urine on the kidneys. At the most serious, such a problem can cause kidney failure and a quick death.
In cases like this the patient needs to get to a hospital quickly so a catheter can be used to drain the bladder. With the emptying of the bladder, the patient will feel much better almost at once. Then the doctors will watch to see if any permanent damage was done to the kidneys and if so what additional treatment might be needed.
Depending on the seriousness of the situation, the patient’s normal kidney function should come back after a week to three months. At that time the prostate should be checked for size to see if prostate surgery or some other treatment is required.
CONGESTION OF THE PROSTATE
Sometimes after normal BPH symptoms in a patient, an urologist will find only a moderately enlarged prostate but one that is mildly congested. There often is no sign of infection. Typically there might be a minor amount of urine that can’t be drained from the bladder during urination.
Often there will be some form of obstruction at the bladder outlet which also restricts bladder emptying.
At this point there is no major problem for the patient and he would be put on a maintenance program to have his prostate checked regularly.
As the prostate grows and the bladder muscles are forced to work harder and harder to push the urine through the narrowing urethra, the bladder can become fatigued. In some cases the bladder will simply quit functioning and urine buildup occurs in the bladder.
This can form a place where bacteria can grow and multiply rapidly. When this happens the patient feels a burning pain when he urinates. Sometimes the urine will have a bad odor and traces of blood can show in the urine.
A danger here is urinary infection, which is usually signalled in the patient by a burning sensation when urinating, chills or fever and the intensification of his regular BPH symptoms.
Here, as in other early symptoms of BPH, the patient may go for several years without any more serious problems than his minor BPH problems.
On the other hand the congestion may increase, and if this happens the patient’s urologist may suggest a prostate massage. Here the prostate is massaged digitally through the rectum and the congested fluid is expelled. This makes the heaviness vanish and a more normal life returns.
The urologist may suggest that a patient have regular prostate massages to relieve the congestion. Or it may be relieved by regular ejaculations through intercourse or masturbation.
Some urologists never recommend repeated prostatic massages. But all suggest in situations like this that the patient should avoid long periods of exposure to intense cold weather, should avoid most spicy foods, should sharply reduce the use of alcoholic beverages, should avoid antihistamines, and they recommend the patient to take warm baths often.
Any shift or intensifying or change in symptoms of the BPH should be reported to the patient’s physician or urologist at once.
Jul
7
BPH SYMPTOMS. WHAT CAUSES BPH?
July 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment
WHAT CAUSES BPH?
No one knows what causes BPH. Just why the prostate starts to enlarge itself in the forty to fifty male years is not understood.
There are two significant factors in this mystery that have been tied down by medical research over the years. One is that a man who has been surgically or hormonally castrated, eliminating the male hormone from his body, never develops an enlarged prostate.
The other uncontested fact is that the onset of BPH is started only with the passage of time.
Castration at an early age to eliminate BPH is a totally unthinkable idea. The other alternative, death at an early age is equally ridiculous as a prevention of BPH.
Which leaves medical science still in kindergarten when it comes to determining the cause of BPH and the chances of scientifically developing a preventive drug or routine and this stops any work on a cure.
Many medical studies have been made in an effort to isolate some other common factor in BPH patients. So far all of these human factors have been ruled out: specific blood types, coronary heart disease, celibacy, hypertension, use of alcohol or tobacco, industrial and environmental conditions.
One constant has been determined: By the age of sixty years, fifty percent of all men will have, to some degree, an enlarged prostate whether or not it is bothering them. By the time American men reach their eightieth birthday, only five out of one hundred will not have BPH.
After broad studies involving Asian men, it was determined that as a group they had fewer cases of BPH and prostatic cancer. However Asian men who moved to the US for a period of time had a significantly increased rate of both BPH and prostatic cancer.
Since Asians typically have had a low cholesterol and low red meat diet, it is speculated that diet may have a larger impact on BPH and prostatic cancer than had been previously thought. With the current wave of anti-cholesterol and anti-fat foods including the campaign against red meat, American men could be experiencing a lower rate of BPH and prostatic cancer in the future.
Is a man’s sex life in any way connected with the cause of BPH or prostatic cancer? A man’s sexual life appears to have no bearing whatsoever on the development of BPH or cancer of the prostate. However, sudden surges in sexual activity, or sudden celibacy often does affect the prostate. These situations will be discussed in a later section.
SO WHAT HAPPENS TO ME NEXT?
Let’s say that you’re reading this book in the first place
because you had some questions about your general health,
or your urination, or your prostate, and after reading the
list of symptoms, bingo! you have three of the symptoms.
Let’s say that you have a hesitancy to start to urinate,
you have a noticeably reduced stream, and you’ve been getting up about three A.M. every night to urinate. What should you do next?
Pick up the phone and get an appointment with your family doctor or call a urologist. It’s time you found out just what’s going on and how serious your BPH really is.
Your next move is to have an examination by a medical professional or a specialist. Just how does a doctor examine you for possible BPH or other prostatic troubles?
Jul
7
BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA (BPH). SYMPTOMS OF AN ENLARGED PROSTATE.
July 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment
SYMPTOMS OF AN ENLARGED PROSTATE
Do you have any of the symptoms of an enlarged prostate? Here is a list of those problems that relate directly to BPH. Study the list critically. Have you experienced any of them?
• A slowing of your urinary stream and its force.
• A slowness to begin urination. You say “start now,” but it may be a few seconds before your stream begins.
• A problem with stopping urination. You tighten the muscles to stop the flow or to prevent any more, but you get a series of continuing dribbles.
• A sensation that your bladder is not completely empty when it should be.
• Frequent urination. You may not notice this during the day, especially if you’re near a bathroom. But at night this is much more evident. Doctors call this nocturia, and it may get you up two, three, four times a night.
• In extreme cases, urinary retention — when you simply can’t urinate. The discomfort and pain can be tremendous.
• Nausea, dizziness, unusual sleepiness brought on if retention has caused kidney damage.
A SIMPLE TEST YOU CAN GIVE YOURSELF
Below is a chart with the symptoms listed above. Some of them are worded differently. At the top are the points to be given for each symptom and its severity. Along the left side are the symptoms.
TOTAL SCORE
POINTS 0 1 2 3 4
STREAM Normal Variable Weals Dribbling
Abdominal
VOIDING No Strain strain or re”
HESITANCY None Yes
INTERMITTENCY None Yes
BLADDER Don’t know Variable Incomplete Single Repeated
EMPTYING or Complete retention
Yee ii ,Wd .9 INCONTINENCET— =
URGE None Mild Moderate Savers
tlmo-d~)
NOCTURIA 0-1 2 3-4
DIURIA ci>llh q2-3h qt-2h ci<lh
Intermittency means that your stream starts, stops and starts again once or more before you feel empty. Incontinence means that you can’t stop urinating when you want to, or you dribble, or pass some water when you don’t want to.
Diuria, means how often your need to urinate during the day. Zero points for three hours or more and 3 points for the need to void each hour during the day.
Mark down what you think your symptoms are. If your score reaches 10 or more, you should probably see your doctor soon about the chances you have BPH.
Jul
7
LIES, MYTHS AND OLD WIVES TALES ABOUT PROSTATITIS
This is a good time to start debunking some of the wild stories and myths and gossip that usually makes the rounds about the lowly prostate. Here are a list of the top ten. You may have heard of some more:
1. Prostate surgery always causes a man to become impotent.
This is simply not true. In the past it was more true than it is today, but now there are newer techniques used in surgery that do not disturb the nerve bundles that run on either side of the prostate. These nerves control a man’s ability to have an erection and intercourse. In cancer surgery, doctors have learned to remove the prostate usually without damaging these nerve bundles. However, some patients still suffer impotency. In the BPH surgery, only five percent of patients suffer any impotency.
2. An enlarged prostate, BPH, is a leading cause of prostate cancer.
Absolutely not. The enlargement of the prostate is in no way connected to the development of prostatic cancer. The cause of the enlargement is not known, but the cause of cancer is and the two are not linked. This myth may have come about because during some surgeries for the relief of BPH, the prostate is found to be cancerous when it had not been so diagnosed before. This actually can be one of the hidden benefits of such surgery.
3. Prostate surgery automatically sterilizes you.
In one half to two-thirds of the patients who have prostatic surgery where some or all of the prostate is removed, the normal course of the semen and other fluids usually ejaculated is disrupted. The fluid takes the course of least resistance and flows upward into the bladder instead of down the urethra and out the penis. To a man 60 or 65 this is usually not so important. However if children are wanted, the semen can be captured from urination soon after the orgasm and used for artificial insemination.
4. Prostate problems turn a man into a wimp.
If this happens it isn’t the result of the prostate problems. There is no loss of manhood, physical or psychological from any of the prostatic problems. There may be psychological side effects by various individuals, but these are mental in nature and could be casued by any number of reasons.
5. Prostate disorders are embarrassing to talk about because they mean a man is oversexed and having sex far too often.
A pure fantasy. Prostate problems and their treatments should not be embarrasing to talk about. Indeed a woman should realize an intelligent and understanding attitude toward prostate testing and evaluation, could save her husband’s life.
6. Orgasm for the man after prostate surgery isn’t the same, isn’t satisfying.
Simply not true. In case after case, the men report that the feeling at the time of orgasm and ejaculation is unchanged from what it was before surgery. Whether the ejaculation fluids go back into the bladder or out the penis, the feeling is exactly the same for the man. If there is a change, it is psychological and unfounded.
7. “Damn, man. Your sex life is over after BPH surgery.
Again, not factual. Any man’s sex life changes as he gets older. In his sixties and seventies a man has sex less frequently than when he was twenty. For at least ninety-five percent, a man’s sex life will be the same after BPH surgery as it was before. For the other five percent, there will be some problems with impotency—but that can be dealt with.
8. Incontinence is an automatic result of BPH surgery.
Researchers show us that only four percent of all BPH surgeries will result in the patients having trouble retaining their urine. That’s twenty-five to one odds, not bad.
9. There are lots of over the counter remedies that will cure my prostate without surgery.
By the end of 1990, the FDA took all such advertised remedies off the market. Previously the Postal Inspectors had closed down dozens of mail order houses who sold them. We will talk about the compounds in these products. Many people believe they are effective in reducing symptoms of BPH. Most do not say they can cure prostatic problems.
10. Prostate is a dirty word and a gentleman never mentions it in mixed company.
Ridiculous. In this more enlightened age, when women are encourged to examine their breasts for lumps, men must be encouraged and badgered into having at least yearly prostate examinations. The best way to do this is through education, and talking about the problem. Talking to the wives of the target men is often the most effective method.
Now, let’s move on to an in depth look at the ailment that affects nearly all older men, BPH.