My Prostate Artery Embolization with Dr. Bagla, Jan 2017

Hi all,

Thank you all for your contributions. I have decided for PAE close to home ( Florida) with Dr Kably at University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital since my insurance is accepted there, no copay. He said he has done around 200, has good reviews, he does it from the wrist, we'll be seeing him soon for a prelim visit before hopefully getting it scheduled. It's easier for me than flying somewhere else.

Good luck everybody.

Hi Sir and anyone else who can help me.

I'm looking for help for my 87 year old father.  10 years ago he went in for an unrelated surgery and the anesthesia gave him a stroke.  He was left unable to speak, work and with one paralyzed arm.  Despite this--he's full of life and always has the biggest smile in the room.  He also has BPH for many years.  So supposedly his prostate is very large.  Now it's starting to have some back flow I think it's called?  Where all the urine doesn't come out.  The dr says this is dangerous because can put pressure on his kidneys and is recommending the Green Light procedure. If he had a stroke from anesthesia at 77 how can we expect him to do well at 87?  Also he's on blood thinners and this procedure sounds very rough and bloody.  Do you this this PAE procedure is less traumatic? Or does anyone know of better medicines to shrink prostate. I know he took finasteride and tamulosin but they are not working well for him now.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  I don't want to lose my dad during one of these procedures.  Thank you in advance for your reply.

UPDATE and New Discovery:  I had a PAE on April 25, 2018 by Dr. Bagla at the Vascular Institute of Virginia, and it was successful.  It is now 52 days and counting since the procedure.  Initially, I felt like I had great success and after a short recovery period of 24 hours I was in healing mode.  Then, around the 35-day period post procedure I started having a variety of issues that I had already been dealing with having BPH.  Getting up 6 plus times a night, back pain, pelvic pain, lower abdomen discomfort and groin discomfort.  My bladder at different times would spasm making urination almost painful with burning sensation along the urethra of the penis.  Went to my doctor and in short nothing worked to relieve my symptoms.  Tried different antibiotics, amoxicillin, then cipro which worked or appeared to work initially and then low dose of nitrofurantoin.  In the end nothing worked to stop discomfort or pain.  The urgency to get up each night so many times was just destroying my life with constant fatigue.  My wife God Bless her, who is somewhat of a health nut, once again tried to convince me to try a home remedy.  She is a strong believer in raw-unfiltered apple cider vinegar (brand name of Bragg) which she mixes with cranberry juice for what she calls detox cleansing.  As is my custom I did some reading first and decided anything was worth a try.  She prepared a 1/2-gallon jug of the magic cocktail.  The recipe is 3/4 cup cranberry juice (recommended organic according to some articles), ¼ cup apple cider vinegar (since my symptoms were so bad she used 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar and 6 cups of water (she used coconut water) for the first go around of the ½ gallon container.  The second mixture of this cocktail was with the recommended 1/3 cup of vinegar.  Drink 8 oz in the morning and 8 oz in the evening for 10 days. DO NOT USE more than 10 days as it has very high acidic content.  It detoxes and cleanses liver, kidney, urinary tract and prostate.  Any of these ingredients can be adjusted for taste.  First time use the taste needs a little getting used to.  She also said optionally, ¼ cup of lemon juice.  So, I embarked on this strange journey and by the third day I was totally symptoms free of all my discomfort and pain and urgencies.  Sleeping like a baby only getting up once or twice and improving.  My urine flow is substantially improved because of the PAE at this point.  Since I was not satisfied with just curing my aliments I did further research and discovered that most likely what I had was not a failed PAE, but Prostatitis.  There are four types of prostatitis and each one has its own symptoms and causes and basically you can get an infection from any bacteria that resides in your prostate and it can be brought on by almost anything without warning.  It can be chronic and persistent impacting the bladder, your kidney, your urinary tract and it inflames the prostate.  I also discovered that antibiotics have a difficult time penetrating the wall of the prostate, if not totally impossible making antibiotics worthless in treating the prostate for this infection.  The vinegar seems to be able to rid the prostate of this bad bacteria.  No doctors have suggested any of this to me so right now I am wondering about even bothering with them anymore.  Just thought I would let all of you know if you are having similar issues and looking to try something different.  If anyone else tries this remedy I would be interested to see how it turns out for them.  The best to all of you suffering.

Just wanted to give a 2+ year followup report on my PAE with Dr. Bagla

My impression....overall, it was a definite "meh". Yes I definitely got improvement, but not nearly as much as I had hoped for. I was hoping for 80% improvement, and I got perhaps 20-25% improvement.

I do have a slightly stronger stream, I seem to pee a bit more volume. No sexual side effects. But the frequency hasn't really changed, and I still get up a lot at night, 2-3 times minimum, sometimes more. I take several supplements, Green tea extract, D-mannose, I take one Uroxatral in the morning, and one generic Cialis in the evening before bed.

The nice thing I can say about PAE it that it's such an easy procedure with little to no chance of things going wrong, it's almost a no-brainer to give it a try. Go to a more invasive procedure if it doesn't work for you.

At this point, I'm better than I was before the procedure...but not a heck of a lot better. So I'm considering another procedure, just not sure which one yet. Perhaps Rezum, perhaps just a bladder neck incision, since my prostate size is not very big and I don't have a middle lobe issue. Mainly just a very narrow bladder neck.

Again, if you are going to get the procedure done, I can't say enough good things about Dr. Bagla. Really great guy, surely one of the best in the U.S.