What Are the Best Treatments for BPH?

Methods for treating BPH (benign prostate hyperplasia) can range from just taking a few pills to complex procedures that require the skills of the best medical experts to complete. Although the disorder is not considered to be life-threatening, and it often doesn’t lead to major complications, leaving it untreated for a long time can become extremely uncomfortable as well as painful. Moreover, long term complications can never be ruled out and there is a possibility that the problem will return after initial treatment, if the treatment wasn’t properly chosen.

Drug Treatments

Selecting the best treatment for BPH can depend on many variables, and most of all it will depend on the health and underlying problems that the patient has already been experiencing. If you have certain disorders already, then some treatments will not be applied, and your doctor will need to find out about them by performing various tests, before they can decide on any particular treatment.

Drug treatments are the least invasive. There are some types of medicine that have proven to be remarkably effective against BPH, being mainly used to attempt to reduce the size of the prostate. Alpha blockers are a good example of how this is achieve in an indirect fashion. They are administered primarily to help relax bladder neck muscles, as well as some of the muscles in the prostate itself. This treatment will typically work best in men who already have relatively small prostates and who haven’t experience a great enlargement as a result of BPH.

A combination between alpha blockers and a set of medicine known as a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor can also be used to try to shrink the prostate by addressing various hormonal balances and changes that influence the function and growth of the prostate. Because of the specific dosages and the way in which this medicine works, it’s not uncommon for it to take up to 6 months before it can be effective.

Finally, some studies show Tadalafil to be a highly effective drug for treating erectile dysfunction that also has a strong impact on reducing the size of the prostate in cases of benign prostate hyperplasia.

best treatment for BPH

Surgeries and Other Treatments

Drugs won’t always work, so it’s essential to ensure that you have another option. Experts at clinics such as ECCO Medical specialize in a variety of advanced procedures that can be performed entirely safely, and that can help reduce the size of the prostate in BPH patients effectively and over just a short period of time.

Transurethral microwave thermotherapy (TUMT) is considered one of the most effective type of treatment. Using an electrode that employs high frequency electromagnetic energy in the microwave range, doctors are able to eliminate the inner portion of the prostate gland and effectively reduce its size. Another efficient method used to achieve the same result is transurethral needle ablation (TUNA), in which a scope is passed through the urethra to enable the doctor to insert needles into the prostate and use radio waves to heat and destroy the excess tissue that is blocking the patient’s urine flow.