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
BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA (BPH)
Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, sometimes called Hypertrophy, is the medical way of saying that the prostate gland has enlarged. In early stages this enlargement may not cause any problems. As it enlarges more and more with a man’s increasing age, it may squeeze the urethra smaller and smaller.
This reduces the force and size of your urine stream, and if left untreated, BPH could lead to the closure of the urethra resulting in severe sickness and even death.
Doctors say that in BPH the glandular tissue within the prostate capsule enlarges, grows, and no one seems to know why it happens or how to prevent or stop this growth.
This is a benign growth. That means it is not cancerous, it does not spread to other parts of the body or attack other tissues or cells. If it were malignant, as in cancer of the prostate, it would destroy and attack other tissue or cells and spread.
In the drawings here, notice how the urethra is fully open in the first one. It passes through the prostate allowing normal flow of urine from the bladder through the urethra and out the penis.
In the second drawing, the darker growth of benign tissue has begun and already has taken the bulge out of the urethra. In the third drawing, the BPH tissue has almost closed the tube the urine must pass through, making urination extremely difficult and bringing on all sorts of BPH symptoms and problems.
We come back to the apple example. Your prostate is like an apple with the core taken out. Through the core goes the urethra. The size of the urethra may begin to shrink when the prostate starts to enlarge when most men are about forty to forty-five. Often by the time a man is in his fifties he’s noticing some changes in his urination pattern.
It is just outside the urethra where the benign growth of the prostatic tissue begins, and it usually grows in both directions, which at once impacts the size of the urethra.
The growth of the tissue usually is not uniform or consistent all along the urethra. It may develop in one section and not in another, so the urethra is not compressed all along its length, at least not at first.
However, as with any tube or a garden hose, pressure at any one spot can shut off the tube entirely and cause all sorts of problems.
The new growth in the prostate consists of the same types of tissue as the normal prostate gland has, but in different proportions. The new, benign growth is going to have more of the glandular type of tissue.
The new growth in the prostate usually develops in both an inward and outward direction, toward the urethra and toward the exterior of the gland. When it grows outward it compresses the normal prostatic tissue against the sturdy outer capsule of the prostate.
When this outer growth takes place in the two lobes of the prostate nearest the rectum, a specialist can feel this with a digital examination. The outward growth does not narrow the urethra so there would be none of the usual BPH symptoms.
In most cases, however, when there is an outward growth of the tissue, it also grows toward the inside as well. Now we get the narrowing of the urethra over the years, and the normal symptoms of BPH.
The prostate has several sections, and digital examination can touch only the back part of the prostate. The sections that can’t be felt can harbor benign or malignant growth. This is one of the reasons for other tests for prostatic cancer that we’ll explain in detail later.