Q & A with Dr. Daniel Rukstalis on prostatic urethral lift for enlarged prostates

A new procedure that relieves symptoms without causing sexual side effects As men get older, their prostates often get bigger and block the flow of urine out of the bladder. This condition, which is called benign prostatic hyperplasia, causes bothersome symptoms. Since men can’t fully empty their bladders, they experience sudden and frequent urges to urinate. Treatments can relieve these symptoms, but not without troubling side effects: pharmaceutical BPH treatments cause dizziness, fatigue, and retrograde ejaculation, meaning that semen gets diverted to the bladder during orgasm instead of being ejected from the body. Surgical treatments such as transurethral resection of the prostate, or TURP, can relieve symptoms for many years. But they also take weeks or months to recover from, and men can experience permanent retrograde ejaculation, and in some instances, long-term impotence. Still, it’s important to treat BPH to avoid even worse problems later. Left untreated, men can develop urinary retention, which is an acute inability to urinate without a catheter, and their bladder health can also deteriorate over time. An alternative Now a newer BPH procedure, called prostatic urethral lift, or UroLift, provides another option. And unlike drugs and older BPH surgeries, it spares sexual functioning. During a UroLift procedure, doctors use tiny implants and sutures to pull the prostate away from the bladder so that urine flows more freely out of the body. The procedure can be p...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: BPH Prostate Knowledge Q & A HPK Source Type: blogs