Q: I have an enlarged prostate. What does this mean?
A: Your primary care physician may have told you your prostate is enlarged. This is a condition known as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH for short). Symptoms of BPH include weak stream, straining to urinate, dribbling, getting up at night frequently to urinate and difficulty emptying the bladder.
There are a few medical therapies that are proven to help with some of these symptoms, and your primary care doctor may have started you on a medication already. Unfortunately, medical therapy can eventually fail as patients’ prostates continue to grow as they age.
If the medicines do not help, you desire to not be on medication, they are causing you side effects or they stop working, there are multipleprocedural and surgical options available to treat BPH. A good first step is setting up a consultation with a urologist. Treatments for BPH include UroLift, transurethral resection of the prostate, and holmium laser enucleation of the prostate, among others. A urologist can help determine which procedure would be best for you with in-office testing, including cystoscopy (looking in the bladder with a small flexible scope with a camera) and prostate ultrasound.
Dr. Alexander Ivey is a urologist at Tennessee Valley Urology Center and a member of the Bradley County Medical Society.