If you or your loved one is a man more than 50 years of age and has urinary problems with an urgent need to urinate, especially at night, difficulty emptying his bladder, and is bothered with dribbling …
This is not a late-night-television attorney advertisement with a call to action, but a frustrating and often embarrassing scenario that many men recognize, mainly attributable to prostate enlargement (medical name: Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, or BPH). The exact cause of BPH is not entirely understood and – while you can’t avoid certain factors, such as aging and family history – exercise and healthy eating can reduce your risk for BPH.
Most men with BPH have mild symptoms that do not interfere with daily routine or quality of life; if they do, the individual probably needs treatment. Prescription medications, like Flomax and Proscar, help to improve symptoms in nearly 80 percent of men. When medications don’t work or are associated with sexual side effects, surgery can help.
Transurethral Resection of the Prostate (TURP) is widely recognized as the most effective surgical option for BPH. It is an operation that involves cutting a portion of the prostate that blocks the passage of urine away from the inside. However, there are risks, including retrograde ejaculation (ejaculation backward into the bladder, instead of through the urinary passage), temporary erection problems, and involuntary leakage of urine.
There are newer procedures that use various types of heat energy to open the urinary passage and are not associated with side effects of surgery. However, like TURP, they work from the inside – by inserting a tiny instrument through the tip of your penis and into the tube that carries urine from your bladder to reach the prostate.
Are you ready to accept the risks of surgery? Does the thought of having an instrument inserted into your urinary passage bother you? There is hope!
Prostate artery embolization (PAE) is a new and effective treatment option for BPH, performed by a board-certified Vascular & Interventional radiologist. PAE is minimally invasive; it does not involve insertion of an instrument into your urine passage. During PAE, small biocompatible nanoparticles are injected into the arterial blood vessels around the prostate to reduce blood flow, causing the entire prostate to shrink, virtually from the outside.
PAE is non-surgical. The entire treatment is performed through a tiny pinhole in the wrist or groin and typically lasts for a few hours. You return home the same day, and can resume work in a couple of days.
Modern medicine is here. PAE may help you pee better.
Keith Pereira, M.D., is assistant professor at Saint Louis University Hospital in the Division of Vascular & Interventional Radiology.
