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Prostate Problem Guide
An Outline Of Enlarged Prostate Treatment
The first question that you need to ask when it comes to enlarged prostate treatment is whether or not you should treat the condition at all.
Once the condition has been diagnosed by your doctor (an important step to make sure that the symptoms that you are experiencing are due to an enlarged prostate and not something else), you will need to decide whether or not the condition is bothering you. If it isn’t, then for many men, the answer is not to treat it at all but simply to let your doctor check the condition for you every few months.
If, however, you are bothered by the symptoms, or your doctor feels that there is a risk of developing complications from the problem, then enlarged prostate treatment should be sought.
The first line of defense will be drug treatment and there are a number of drugs currently in use and others under active testing and development. On the whole drug treatment will not cure the condition but it can give relief from the symptoms of a swollen prostate. You will need to discuss drug treatment with your doctor as many patients in the age group for which an enlarged prostate is common will already be on drug treatment for other conditions. Your doctor will also discuss the range of likely side effects which enlarged prostate treatment drugs carry with them.
CAT SCAN (CT OR COMPUTERIZED AXIAL TOMOGRAPHY): is a method of combining images from multiple x-rays under the control of a computer to produce cross-sectional or three-dimensional pictures of the internal organs which can be used to identify abnormalities; the CAT scan can identify prostate enlargement but is not always effective for assessing the stage of prostate cancer; for evaluating metastases of the lymph nodes or more distant soft tissue sites, the CAT scan is significantly more accurate.
IL-1 (INTERLEUKIN 1): a cell product involved in the immune response (cytokine) which facilitates osteoblast growth among its many functions.
PROGNOSIS: the patient's potential clinical outlook based on the status and probable course of his disease; chance of recovery.
REMISSION: the real or apparent disappearance of some or all or the signs and symptoms of cancer; the period (temporary or permanent) during which a disease remains under control, without progressing; even complete remission does not necessarily indicate cure.
If you are not felt suitable for drug treatment (or you doctor does not feel that drug treatment will be effective in your case) then the next step is to consider minimally invasive surgery. There are a range of procedures available today some of which can be undertaken on a day-patient basis and some of which will require a short stay in hospital. In most cases minimally invasive surgery is designed to shrink the prostate gland or to remove prostate tissue from the area around the urethra and thus ease constriction on the urethra and restore the flow of urine from the bladder.
If these forms of treatment are not suitable, or have been tried and proved ineffective, then enlarged prostate treatment will move on to surgery. Two commonly performed operations are the TURP and TUIP both of which can be carried out laparoscopically or using robot technology and require a stay in hospital of between 2 and 3 days. In other cases, and especially where the prostate is exceptionally enlarged, traditional open surgery may be performed with hospitalization typically lasting about a week.
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