Dr. David Samadi explains what are the symptoms and treatment of BPH
Welcome to another episode of Sunday Housecall!
Dr. David Samadi talks about his book, the Ultimate MANual
It is a pleasure to be with you. As you know, my name is Dr. David Samadi and I will be talking to you for the next 20 minutes about some of the questions that have come up. Before I start with the topic today, I want to encourage everyone out there to really be looking into our recently published book, called “The Ultimate MANual”. It is a very exciting book, there are a lot of great reviews and people absolutely love it. You know, through the pandemic we had so much time, so, instead of feeling sorry for ourselves because of all the lockdown and the things that happened I decided to put all the information accumulated through the years I have been on Fox News, Sunday Housecall and other.
The book covers the following topics: What vitamins you should be taking? What is good for your prostate health? How to improve your sex life? Do I need to take testosterone and what type? How to build muscles? Etc. It is all under one book, called the Ultimate MANual, which is available on Amazon and which I definitely recommend to buy for your boyfriend, your husband, etc, and certainly, it will be very helpful.
After the show, once it is over, I am going to answer all of your questions that come up on Facebook and also on Youtube. So, I hope we will spend a good time together. The topic today is an about enlarged prostate, or something called BPH (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia).
What is BPH? – Dr. David Samadi explains
BPH, or an enlarged prostate, is a natural process that we are going to see as we get older. As we get through our 50s or 60s, it is possible to suffer from an enlarged prostate. By the time we get to our 70s or 80s, we are going to see that more than 70% of men are going to suffer from an enlarged prostate. That is because, over the years, the male hormone, which is testosterone, is going to affect our prostate and make it grow larger.
What kind of symptoms should you be looking for?
Symptoms of BPH
People ask me: “Well, how do I know that I have an enlarged prostate?”
Well, that is simple. If you have frequency if you suffer from getting up in the middle of the night if your urine flow is very low and if you just go to the bathroom and you have to go again it means that you could be suffering from BPH. Intermittency, urgency, getting up in the middle of the night, not emptying well – all of these are signs and symptoms of an enlarged prostate.
What medication should you be taking for BPH?
Well, there comes another important question, that is: “What’s next?” How are we going to manage this and what are the diagnostic tools that we use in your office to find out what to do? And some of the things that we could do are very simple. It consists of a urine test and we make sure to look at your urine flow. Do you empty your bladder? We can do a bladder ultrasound and see if you are emptying well. But there are also a lot of medical treatments. There are oral medications, such as Flomax, or Uroxatral – that can take care of the symptoms. And if your symptoms are fine, then I think you will be good.
But, what if you do not want to take these medications and you do not want to be obligated to be on these medications?
Dr. Samadi explains why is Urolift a good treatment for BPH
There are several new procedures that are minimally invasive and are easy to use. One of them that I think in certain patients could be very helpful is Urolift and you probably have heard of this. Urolift is very simple. After we do the cystoscopy, looking inside the prostate with a camera we can determine the size of the prostate.
If I see that you are young and your prostate is not that large, I can basically use Urolift. You can see that by squeezing the prostate and lifting it up and placing these anchors that will stay there and won’t cause any problem we will be able to open up a beautiful channel. These will make the urinary stream stronger, you will be able to empty your bladder better. As a result, all of the symptoms that we spoke about, whether it was urgency, frequency, nocturia or getting up in the middle of the night, blood in the urine, painful urination, all of that is going to be gone.
This procedure Urolift is done a lot of times in the hospital and it is an ambulatory procedure. This means you are going to go home faster and you do not need any catheter after this. It takes nearly 10-15 minutes exactly as you can see to squeeze and open up the prostate. This way, a nice channel is formed. We can see very soon the before and after effect of this kind of procedure, proving that this is very helpful.
I would recommend Urolift to people who are in their 50s and early 60s, where the prostate is not really large and we will be able to open it up.
When is Button TURP recommended for BPH?
But there could be situations when the prostate is too large or after we have done the cystoscopy we see that the patient has a real mechanical obstruction of the median lobe. In these cases, the procedure, which is my favorite one, called the Button TURP, is very effective. By putting the camera in, you use a loop to shave the prostate. This is the urethra, we are looking at the tube. This is called cystoscopy. And you can see the obstructive tissue here that can easily be removed.
This is the loop that I use and you can see how the tissue is completely being removed without any problem.
I like this procedure and I do a lot of them because I think in a short period of time it is very effective.
The tissue can be removed and can be sent to the lab for further investigations to check if there is any cancer in that tissue. It opens up a nice channel, where the patients are able to urinate better, with a stronger flow, emptying well. And this type of TURP is different from the old-fashioned type. The old-fashioned TURP caused a lot of bleeding and we could not see so well. But with this Bipolar or so-called Button TURP, you are cauterizing the tissue as we are resecting and the risk of bleeding is minimum. And if there is less bleeding, you can see the tissue and do a beautiful operation. The risk of incontinence is extremely low and certainly won’t affect the sexual function, it may affect some of the ejaculations.
I think today you do not have to suffer from the symptoms of an enlarged prostate. It can affect your overall health, it can cause prostatitis, it can affect your sex life, and cause impotence. So, before it affects your bladder and before it causes a lot of thickening of your bladder, we can treat this with medical treatment, Urolift, laser, and certainly this Button TURP. There are many other options available which I am more than happy to discuss with you.
For any questions about your enlarged prostate, improving your sex life, testosterone treatments, prostate cancer, feel free to call 212- 365-5000.
After the program is over, I am going to answer all of your questions.
Thank you so much and we will be bringing these kinds of episodes every week with new topics.