Prostates keep enlarging as men get older. That benign growth, BPH, can squeeze the urethra, the tube urine travels through.
Common signs
- Waking more than once a night to pass urine
- A flow that is thin or keeps stopping
- Trouble starting
- Drips after you think you have finished
- Feeling the bladder is not empty
- Urinary infections
Symptoms do not always match prostate size: a small prostate can cause a lot of trouble, and a large one can cause little. If no urine will come at all, treat it as an emergency.
Evaluation
Because some symptoms overlap with infection, stones, a narrowed urethra or prostate cancer, the visit starts by ruling those out. Before any procedure we measure the prostate and check how well the bladder empties.
Treatment
Many men start with medicine. When it does not help enough, or you would rather not take it long term, Advanced Urology offers UroLift and HoLEP/ThuLEP through its urologists and prostate artery embolization (PAE) through its interventional radiologists. Read our side-by-side comparison of UroLift, PAE and HoLEP.
At Sandy Springs, Herman Bagga, MD, FACS, Marc Greenstein, DO and Vahan Kassabian, MD list BPH care in their practice. Advanced Urology also explains enlarged prostate.