Combodart (tamsulosin hydrochloride dutasteride) side effects

Get off the second medication ASAP - you can google side effects, very bad and dangerous drug I took it for a couple of months also felt listless and I'm lucky I stopped in time before it did any damage. Tamsulosin is OK but causes floppy iris syndrome which makes cataract surgery tricky but good surgeons can work around it. I take Tamsulosin it also reduces ejaculation.

If your prostate is that big that Urologist wants you to take dutasteride you probably should research what surgery you need and do it sooner rather than later otherwise you can cause problems for your bladder or even kidneys. There are lots of discussions on various procedures on patient.info

While I was on Tamsulosin, I had retro-ejaculation and postural hypotension (felt dizzy and in danger of passing out if I stood up quickly). I think Tamsulosin lowers blood pressure - which may be a good thing, but not if it goes too far!

Hi, Mike is right -it wont cost much to get an ultra sound of your prostate and if need be a suitable mri its essential to pinpoint the exact prostate issue then do heaps of research on your best option this forum has a lot of good discussion about options, get off the drugs as soon as you can, also if you have to push to pee don't as you will do eventual damage to your kidneys and bladder wall, if you have an enlarged median lobe pushing your bladder neck up natural supplements did not work for me so I ditched them along with the drugs and chose FLA focal laser ablation rather than turp there are other options its up to you to research them this forum is good for that, all the best Brian.

Thanks for replies. Spoke to doctor today and going back on Tamsulosin.

After diagnosis (finger test) and a blood test what should next steps be? Doctor hasn’t put any plans in for how long I should be on tablets,  further tests etc. Should I be pushing for more investigation?

I’m in the UK of that helps on what’s available.

Assuming the DRE and blood tests are OK it's up to you, I don't know how UK insurance works, but if you want to get of pills figure out which surgery you want to try. In the USA it seems the approach of my Urologist was to first try all the various meds before surgery. The idea is if a pill works why do surgery? Or at least put surgery off as long as possible, assuming you are not damaging bladder or kidneys. On the other hand there are many patients who after surgery wished they had not waited so long because the relief and improvement to lifestyle is so dramatic. You might want to learn how to self catheter in case you ever get blocked, a nurse will teach you how don't try without being shown. That will help you avoid a trip to the emergency room. Plenty of threads here search for CIC.

Good luck!

The international aspect of this site must help a lot in evaluating the many prostate options that are in some places not openly available. Public and insurance costing have a lot to do with the treatments offered for BHP. This cost saving is helped by the “everyone’s different” phrase that keeps coming up, but only with prostates

I was treated for BPH in Australia since 1990. An Untrasound (U/S) outcome was about to result in a biopsy but a last minute cancellation was called because of the discovery that “U/S didn’t detect Prostate Cancer (PCa)”

In 2006 (Prostate Volume 53cc) I was prescribed Alpha Blocker Prazosin 4mg a day with no side effects. In September 2009 a 6 random hit U/S guided biopsy found “no evidence of malignancy”. I suspect U/Ss were of no greater assistance in locating cancer as was the only 6 random specimens being extracted.

In 2013 (Prostate Volumn 74cc) my Prazosin was becoming a LITTLE less effective and I suggested an increase in dosage. Urologists had known since 1995 that Prazosin would need an increase in dosage above 4mg a day after 2 years but no one had bothered to do the research to allow it to be prescribed. I was therefore prescribed DUODART (Alpha blocker Tamsulosin 4mg + Dutasteride 5mg) March 2013 to March 2014 +4mg Prazosin instead. This took my blockers to double the researched dosage anyway?????? It also introduced a PCa risk factor I was not told about that was not listed in the drug’s “side effects”. In April 2014 I reverted to 4mg Prazosin alone.

My PSA had never gone above 3.8 and in June 2015 (Prostate Volume 68cc) it went from 1.15 (March 2014) to 2.62. My GP had declined my request for PSA in September 2014 on urology guidelines. The June 2015 = 1.47 PSA increase raised my GP’s concern but Urology still preferred continuation of monitoring via PSA. I persuaded a change and Urology requested a MRI that detected 2 areas of likely cancer. Biopsy confirmed the 2 MRI identified areas a Gleason 3+4 PCa with other, just U/S guided, specimen tissue showing no evidence of malignancy.

Open Radical Prostatectomy 5 November 2015 (Prostate Volume 63.5grams) was performed without robot assistance even though my surgeon was an expert because the equipment was not available in our city. At that time our government still preferred U/S guided biopsies for detecting PCa and would not contribute to MRIs. Ultrasounds had been found to be ineffective for PCa detection as far back as 1990. A friend of substantial financial wealth dying from Bowel Cancer was told belatedly by his physician he should have had PET scans for it every 2 years. He would have if he had known the benefit but had scans become the norm for the majority the government was responsible for it would have heavily impact Budget costs. It seems most of us do not get best practice medical treatment due to Budget restraints.

 Post RP has been horrific. Incontinence, fungal infections, rashes, complications, mistreated blockage and who knows what hormone and immune system changes. I know the chance of DUO DART causing my Cancer is low. FDA said 1 in 200 I believe, but I can’t stop thinking I did not have to take this risk at all. I see on this forum that people are taking up to 8mg a day of Alpha blockers. Why couldn’t they have researched above 4mg somewhere in the 20 years between 1995 and 2015?

5ARIs Dutasteride and Finasteride were purposely researched on high risk of PCa participants by the drug’s supplier. The supplier then uses this study design fault itself to deflect the suspicion of the increased high range Cancer risk. They then market these drugs under so many different names to deflect adverse outcomes. I may have had Cancer all along but now no one will ever know.

We take so many drugs that manipulate and interfere with the normal working of our complicated bodily functions. Everywhere in the writings surrounding these drugs we see “we do not fully understand the” implications. They tell us to make “risk vs benefits” decisions then hide the risks from the “side effects” of the drugs. My benefit was miniscule in relation to the risk I faced and I was not allowed to know this.

Barrie Heslop