BPH, or Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, is a condition that affects the prostate gland in adult males. It is a condition that can go unnoticed for long periods because it doesn’t have major disruptive symptoms that can alarm you. If you are mindful and can figure out your symptoms soon, it can help you go through the treatment easily with almost no pain with just medication. However, if your symptoms take time to show up and you have an advanced BPH case, treatment options must resort to surgery.

While in the past, BPH surgeries would be something that would concern you, today, it has become much safer and accessible. You can avail of laser surgeries and minimally invasive procedures with quick recovery and low risks. So, Let’s take a closer look at the different medical treatments for BPH, how they can help you, and the different BPH treatment guidelines that doctors follow. However, you must diagnose the problem before treatment to assess the case accurately. So, let’s first learn how BPH is diagnosed.

How Is BPH Diagnosed?

BPH has various risk factors, especially age. Men over the age of 50 are at high risk for BPH. So, for people with BPH, age, preexisting conditions, the severity of the symptoms, and the size of your prostate all play into deciding whether your condition can be treated with medicine or if it requires surgery. However, getting the correct diagnosis first is crucial to ensure the treatment you get is effective and quick at helping with your symptoms. So, let’s look at the different methods used to diagnose BPH and how doctors determine your treatment process based on your symptoms and diagnosis.

Rectal Exam: Rectal examinations are a common way to diagnose prostate problems. You may also hear about these as prostate tests more commonly. Doctors insert a finger inside the rectum of a person and feel to see if the prostate is enlarged or not. This is a very basic test that is a part of regular health checkups as you grow older. Regular prostate examinations can diagnose your condition early, which will help you with more accessible treatment and quicker recovery.

Blood Test: Blood tests are another way to diagnose BPH. However, they are generally conducted when you start showing some type of symptoms for BPH. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the protein that is tested when you have a blood test for BPH. Higher than-average amounts of this protein in your blood can indicate the presence of an enlarged prostate. However, PSA can be high in your body for other reasons as well, like other conditions or prostate cancer. So, based on your blood reports, doctors can use other tests to confirm if you have BPH or not using the next method.

Urinalysis: To make sure you have BPH or not, doctors use urinalysis, where they test the urine for its composition to figure out if you have an enlarged prostate or not. This method is actually used both independently and after blood tests. The urine test looks at any bacteria or traces of infection in your urine, which can point towards BPH. This test is also performed generally after you start showing symptoms of BPH. For complicated cases or based on the severity of your symptoms, other advanced diagnostic tests can be performed to check if you have an enlarged prostate or not. However, the tests mentioned above are the basic and first line of diagnosis for typical cases of BPH. So, now that doctors have diagnosed your case let’s discuss the various treatment options for BPH.
 

BPH Treatment Options You Should Know About

One of the interesting things about BPH is that treatment for it can be optional for many people. BPH doesn’t really get in the way of your everyday lifestyle until you have serious symptoms that hamper your quality of life. So, in general, patients can choose not to go through treatment if they have no symptoms that hamper their health. This is actually not medically unsound as well because, for many, an enlarged prostate doesn’t cause any health problems and can be lived with without any problem. So, as a patient, you can have the option to wait and see if your symptoms get worse before you go through the treatment options.

However, if and when your symptoms do get serious, you can get treated relatively quickly with plenty of options in terms of BPH. Most people can manage their condition with medication, but if you have an advanced or complicated case, minimally invasive and laser surgery can easily treat your condition. Let’s review how medication and surgery can help people with BPH.

Medications Used To Treat BPH:  Medicines are the first line of treatment when you have BPH. For mild to moderate cases, medicines are enough to treat the enlarged prostate, and you don’t need anything else to get better. Some medicines used for treating BPH are also used for treating other urinary tract conditions like kidney stones. Let’s look at some of the most common drug types used for treating BPH.

Alpha Blockers:  Alpha-blockers are commonly used medicines for problems regarding your urinary tract. These medicines relax the smooth muscles of your bladder neck and your prostate. For people that are having difficulty urinating due to an enlarged prostate, alpha-blockers can help with that. The relaxed prostate smooth muscles help clear out your urinary tract, which is one of the major problems for people with BPH.

Alpha-blockers are relatively safe, but they do have side effects like dizziness and lightheadedness after you quickly stand up from a sitting or lying position. It can also cause your blood pressure to drop, so generally, these medicines are prescribed to be consumed at bedtime to reduce any risk of injuries. These medicines also interact with erectile dysfunction medication like sildenafil tablets. Doctors will advise you against having them together. 

And lastly, one of the effects of alpha-blockers can be that they can hinder your ability to ejaculate. These medicines can cause the semen to go into your bladder instead of coming out of the tip of your penis (as usual), which is known as retrograde ejaculation. It is a harmless side effect, which affects the amount of semen that comes out of your penis during ejaculation.

Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitors:  These medicines were mainly developed to cure erectile dysfunction but later it was noticed that they could also be used to treat an enlarged prostate. Much like alpha-blockers these medicines also relax the smooth muscles in your bladder and prostate, to help with urination. These medicines are quite rare and there are not many other uses for them as well. In fact, there is only one medicine in this category that gets approval from FDA, which is tadalafil.

There are a few minor side effects of these medicines like upset stomach, stuffy nose, headaches, and muscle pain in your back. Doctors generally prescribe this medicine specifically in cases where erectile dysfunction and BPH are both affecting the patient.

5-alpha reductase inhibitors:  This is one of the most effective medicines for BPH as it stops the hormonal changes in your body that lead to the growth of your prostate. Not only that, this medicine can actually help shrink your prostate as well and it is one of the medicines that can help you get BPH treatment without surgery. Like the other medicines, 5-ARIs also help with urination and are very effective in people with advanced cases or very large prostates.

One of the important things with these medicines is that it takes a considerable amount of time to see the results, but they generally do work. It takes around 6 months of regular medication to see positive results and in that time, the PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) balance of your body also changes. So, that can be a difficulty for your doctors as the PSA levels in your body are also used to check for prostate cancer. So, doctors generally advise that you have a PSA blood test before you start using these medicines.

Side effects of these medicines include lower sex drive, erectile dysfunction, and retrograde ejaculation. It is generally harmless and doctors will guide you appropriately to ensure you are not facing any problems during your recovery.

Combination Medicinal Therapy: For BPH, one medicine generally doesn’t cut it. Doctors generally prescribe a combination of the drug types mentioned above. They can help you get rid of your symptoms quickly and get see effective results. These medicines can interact with each other if they are not taken as per your doctor’s orders, so make sure you follow their instructions carefully.

These are the medicines used for treating BPH, for people with mild to moderate symptoms, these medicines can be enough to treat their condition. However, if medicines are not doing it for you or if you have an advanced case, doctors will recommend surgery. Let’s look at the surgical treatment options for BPH.

Surgical Treatment Options for BPH

Just like medicines, there are actually a lot of options when it comes to surgical treatment for BPH. They are recommended by doctors in case you want quick relief from your problems. However, there are certain conditions like having urinary tract infection, neurological conditions, and a history of urological surgery in the past, that can make you unfit for surgery. 

You should also know that surgical procedures also come with some risk factors and a possibility of side effects later. However, with BPH surgeries, following the after surgery care instructions properly will help you navigate recovery easily without getting any of the side effects.

Laser Treatment: Laser therapy treatment for BPH is a minimally-invasive procedure that can help you treat BPH effectively with a quick recovery. The best part about this procedure is that there is no incision made into your body. The laser fibres and the telescopic camera are inserted into your body through your urethra. The laser can easily melt the enlarged prostate tissues, which causes blockages in your urinary tract. 

This procedure is safe and the laser can be very precise in ensuring the surrounding tissues are not hurt during the process. This surgery is done under anaesthesia and doesn’t involve many risks. Patients can easily get back to a normal lifestyle in less than a week when you get this surgery done from experienced institutions like MASSH.

HoLEP Treatment: Holmium Laser Enucleation of the Prostate. It uses high-powered lasers to completely remove the part of the prostate that’s blocking your bladder. The tissues are removed from your body and studied in the lab to check for cancer and the exact cause behind the abnormal growth of your prostate. 

The procedure is performed under anaesthesia and like laser treatment, the surgical instruments are inserted into the body through the urethra. The holmium laser, which is very powerful and precise is used to melt the tissues that are blocking the flow of urine. Then a separate instrument is inserted which cuts the tissues into small pieces that can be removed from your body through the urethra. This procedure resembles an open surgery, but unlike open surgery, no incisions are made into the patient’s body for HoLEP procedures.

This surgery is very effective and useful for complicated cases of BPH where the prostate has grown abnormally large. As a minimally invasive procedure, it has a quick recovery, and very low risks, making it perfect for people annoyed by the symptoms of BPH. This procedure can offer quick treatment for the symptoms of BPH and help you get back to your normal lifestyle in just a few days. However, for a quick recovery and safe procedure, you must choose a qualified healthcare expert and an experienced medical institution like MASSH.

Conclusion

BPH is treatable whether you want to do it with medicines or with surgery. You can get rid of your symptoms quickly and effectively with the treatment options listed in this article. To learn more about BPH treatment, check out the MASSH website. We offer quick and easy minimally invasive surgical treatments for BPH, that can help you get rid of your symptoms and enlarged prostate. Visit our hospital to get treated today.