PAE... Sounding better and better!

How does he base the chances of stroke? If so he means if catheter inserted through wrist or arm - if inserted in groin area there is no chance of stroke.

Oh and 10% chance of erectile distinction with TURP if that means anything - for some older men it's not an issue I suppose

Hi Mike. It is because they are injecting these balls or whatever into significant blood vessels. A stroke can kill you of course. TURP should have pretty well no risk of erectile dysfunction. That is a sometimes outcome for a prostectomy. TURP does have a high risk of retrograde ejaculation though.

​I didn't get the retrograde ejaculation, or not much anyway.

Grant maybe you should do your research - the docs are very careful to inject the material using sophisticated imaging - the blood flows to the prostate only and not heart if they insert in groin. A surgeon told me this specifically and said the only concern of stroke is if material inserted in arm because then if some mishap happens it could escape theoretically and block the wrong area - but that has never happened as far as I know.

The 10% statistic can be found online - I suspect older men more likely still you can't just say it doesn't happen. I spoke to a physician who had TURP done to himself and he was happy but he said erections "not as strong" as before.

People who have taken some drugs like Flomax experience retrograde and don't like the sensation - but I suppose you can get used to it

Hi Mike:

I don't like being an arm chair expert or dealing with them either.

I got my information from a qualified doctor, a urologist.

I have heard that the chance is there, in TURP, for both erectile disfunction AND incontinence.  When my urologist was pushing TURP on me, or trying to, I brought up these possible outcomes.  He poo-poohed my concern and said, "It happens to less than 5% of men who get TURPed."  I replied, "And would YOU want to be one of those?"  He had no answer, and I passed on TURP (and got the Urolift last December).  AND  I pass that unanswered question on to you.  Caveat emptor and if you can't afford to lose (or don;t want to!), do you want to play?   Just a question for ya!  

Hey I was just trying to be helpful - I got the 10% figure for TURP from 3 different Urologists I saw over the last 4 years and just suggested you can look up this freely available information. and the info about PAE from two different surgeons who specialize in it. I didn't just google it

Grant, NONE of us are experts, that's a given.  But many of us are here because we were misled/deceived/misinformed along the line.  It is a common thread in so many of the stories you can find on this site.  This is a fast-changing area of medecine: the doc who pushed TURP hard on me, in August of 2014, is now doing the Urolift, since last December.  When he was pushing TURP, he never mentioned this as a possibility; when I chose the most experienced Urolift doc in the country to do my procedure, my home-uro-doc was just starting to train.

If you wish to put your faith completely in the hands of your urologist, go for it!  No one is stopping you.  So many of us have just learned that we need to be informed patients, making informed choices for our own best interests.  The urologists are not, I'm sad to say, always the most informed people in the discussion!  Caveat emptor, God bless and best of luck.  

Surgeons Don't do the PAE. It's done by an interventional radiologist.

Neal

I've already had my TURP and it worked fine. I do place a lot of faith in the doctors but I did my own research first.

I think just looking at statistics is deceiving. Each patient is different which is why you do end up relying on the doctor. My risks were small for all of the things mentioned here as I am fit, relativeley young at 58 and my prostate is a normal size.

​The TURP has been around for a long time and the risks are well known and managed well. There are over 50 treatments for BPH and it takes time for each one to get researched properly, it takes years and thousands of operations to really finalise all the risks. PAE for instance can kill you through stroke but the risk is small. There are TURP risks but the risk of it killing you is pretty well zero.

Anthony,

I would really like to know where the "2 Year" figure is coming from - here is what Dr Pisco presented i think in 2014 over around 500 patients

"Improvements in symptoms were reported by 87 percent of men three months after the procedure, 80 percent after 18 months, and 72 percent after three years.":

It DOES seem if you look at those numbers that PAE is not a permanent solution so by year 3 it is not as effective. Even knowing that I would rather do PAE and buy myself some time.

If money is a concern you might rather do TURP which they say is "the gold standard" and does not have to be repeated.

When I wrote before abojut 10% chance of erectile disfunction, the Urologists all made clear that it's actually less of a chance and not likely, and the 10% figure comes from the fact that it includes men older than 70 - youner men should be OK with it.

The same Dr Pisco study mentions that many men report IMPROVED sexual function and there were ZERO side effects, men could even still have children. I haven't seen a similar claim regarding TURP - as I wrote before I spoke to a Physician who had the procedure himself and he said he was happy, erections "not as strong" as before but good enough.

I saw another experienced Urologist, a female one who is very unusual in that she was ALL FOR PAE, she described TURP and other surgeries like Green Light as "Barbaric" and aknowledged she will probably lose money but she thinks it's the right thing to recommend for BPH. These were her words, a successful Urologist, not an "arm chair critic" - ha ha ... "If you were my brother I would tell you to have PAE"

 

Mike,

I probably got that "2 yr." time frame from various blogs on this site, as the same with your mentioning  3+.   I guess it may have to do with actual results from others.  Results vary from person to person.   Studies and percentages are all nice, but there is nothing like hearing first hand.

     However I am still highly considering the PAE over the TURP.

The next thing I need to look into is rather or not if my insurance will cover the procedure.   I know that it is not yet FDA approved and am sure that will play a big role.

Thank you for your feedback!

If you Google prostate regrowth after TURP the usual figure is that 10% of patients will need a second procedure after 10 years.