Vitamin D and your prostate

Neil, You've got to be one of the best if not THE best BPH researcher I've seen on the net. I'm just skeptical about vitamin D ... but who knows... I guess it couldnt hurt...BPH is such a medical mystery as far as why the interspermatic veins fail and I believe thats the cause.. Maybe it's a evolutionary thing. When we started walking upright it put more pressure on the veins. It could just be that we're living longer.. and veins eventually go bad.

Keep us updated on your procedure on the different sites.

Neil

Are you having GG in Israel or in the U.S.? UK?

What is cost?

Why did you select GG over PAE/FLA?

Thanks

Wish you wellness and healing,

Michael

Looking into K2 with D3

Neil where are you planning on having the Gat Goren procedure done? I've read a little about it. There is a discussion on another website about this procedure. Maybe you've already seen it but I'll PM you the link anyway.

Unckle, can you PM me the website about the Gat Goren procedure. I am very interested in following it also. I am proud of Neil and his decision. Maybe he can be the bird dog on that procedure and find something that is actually a cure for this condition instead of a symptom relief procedure which is all we have had to go for. I am very happy with my results but I also know it is not a cure. SO I stay hopeful, happy and and watching for the answer to the question. But I also know, it will not come out of the Urology part of medicine. 

Thanks John

Hi Michael, unclefester, tgt and john,

Thanks for your comments. As my disease (BPH) has progressed over the years I've become more and more panicky to find a solution as I approached retention. I have 2 uros with operating tables waiting for me to take out my prostate.

Last year I followed another forum that has a 5-year thread devoted to Gat Goren. So I learned a great deal from these guys and decided to blow my ira and go to Cyprus for it. But as part of the prep I got an ultrasound which showed my prostate had grown to 280gm.

Dr. Gat refused to treat me because he said the procedure takes about a year to work (though for many guys it was much less). He was afraid I would be in renal failure by then.

So I tried PAE last summer which was a huge technical success but also a huge clinical failure because it did not detsroy tissue around my urethra where the compression occurs. Personally I do not believe the PAE statistics since I knwo too many guys for whom it did not work.

Anyway last Fall I learned to do self-cathing (CIC) with the help of jimjames and others on this fourm. They saved my life because now I have the time to try other non-radical solutions.

So my urologist in Detroit actually referred me to Dr. Vartanian who is a wonderful VIR. My urologist is open-minded but still believes I will eventually have to come to him for robotic prostate removal.

Anyway, the Gat theory says that all men who have BPH also have varicoceles. So I asked Dr. Vartanian for an order to get a scrotal ultrasound before seeing him. Sure enough it should bilateral varicoceles.

He is a vascular IR and has never treated varicoceles for BPH. However because I have been in distress with these things for years (I always have to sit on soft pads and pull my scrotum up when I sit) then he agreed to embolize them .

This is all basically that GG do with a few refinements which Dr. V is aware of. Also because I do have bilateral ones and suffer from them then the procedure is covered by Medicare!!

So now I will go in on May 2 and I pray it will work. I self-cath 4 times  a day and do not want this for the rest of my life ( I am 68).

Oddly enough Dr. Karamanian in Houston who did my biopsy in Feb. knows of Dr. V and recommends him. Dr, K gave me  a nice 3D tour of my prostate from my MRI last Fall and showed me why my PAE did not work. Dr. K's FLA will be next on my list if GG does not work but I have to give it a year.

I mentioned to Dr. V that if this works he will be inundated with requests from BPH sufferers like me and he thought that was cool. He has  a 5 star rating from 84 patients and after meeting with him I can see why.

I will start a new thread on this soon and use it as a diary. I sure hopes it works for all of our sakes.

Neil

Thank you Neil,

I'm sure many of us will follow your story closely. I'm among those who appreciate what you bring to this forum.

I will keep you in prayer asking God to grant you healing and relief.

Michael

thanks Neil for all the good information.

 

Neil, good luck. No one is more proud of you than me. We are all pulling for you now. Your complete treatment and the post about it will be critical to everyone as there is no cure for BPH. PLEASE start the post and let us follow you through the procedure and recovery.

You are correct, if you have found a US source for a solution and cure of BHP we will all be after this guy. You and he will be the pioneers of this. And we are all praying for your success. 

John.

Thanks everyone for your good wishes. I was thinking I really should not call it the Gat-Goren procedure but rather the "Gat-Goren" procedure since only Dr. Gat can really perform his procedure. I am sure there are many subtleties to the procedure that only he knows about. But there are guys who had their own VIRs embolize their varicoceles and saw their BPH much improve so maybe that is all that is required - I hope. See you on my own thread soon.

Neil

Neil, that was really interesting.  Please keep us updated as to your progress.  Where are you having this procedure done?

Neil,

So that I understand correctly, Dr. Vartanian in Michigan performs the G-G procedure?

I tried googling for doctors who do the procedure in the US but came up empty.

Others here have mentioned PAE by Dr. Pisco and traveling to Lisbon or FLA.  I know those options are cost prohibitive for me.

I have researched and found FLA will run $20,000+ out of pocket.  I think PAE was about 50-60% less expensive, but still all out of pocket. 

If G-G is covered by insurance (if varicoceles are present?) or if G-G is significantly less than FLA and if it has good results I would be interested if there is a doctor in the US with experience.

If not for this forum I would be headed to open partial prostatectomy over the summer (I am not a TURP candidate) and I desperately want to avoid major surgery.  My insurance would cover prostatectomy.  I hate to be shoehorned into a medical decision just because I'm financially strapped.

What diagnostic test is needed to confirm varicoceles and does only an interventional radiologist do that test?

From what I gather, G-G has a longer wait to show benefit than PAE or FLA but it has potential better long term results.  Does that sum it up well?

Thank you, Keith!

Michael

*Neil (not Keith)

I'm sorry!  (senior moment) 

 

Hi Michael,

 

    Not sure if this will make any difference for you, but as of my last conversations with two of the most experienced PAE IRs in the US, the out of pocket costs were as follows:

Dr Bagla in VA.   8,000

Dr Isaacson in NC.  6,500

Hi  Michael - you raise a lot of important stuff. I will start my own thread this weekend on my procedure but let me just write something here.

First : Last year at this time I was also like you scheduled for a simple prostatectomy and was not a candidate for other procedures because of my prostate size. I had PAE done instead but it failed and I was in retention.

So I learned to do self-catherization to avoid having my prostate removed and to save my kidneys and bladder while waiting to do something else. The catheters are covered by insurance. I learned to do self-cathing from the great guys on this forum. Is self-cathing an option for you? If so I would really recommend you learn that survival skill and I can help you.

The Gat-Goren procedure is basically the same procedure that interventional radiologists have been doing for decades to treat infertility in men. It consists of sealing off the long veins that drain the testes and prostate. These veins have failed for whatever reason to return blood back to the heart so it has to find other paths to get there.

These doctors (Gat and Goren) noticed over the years that their patients that also had BPH ended up not only fertile again but had their BPH cured too.

So they started treating men in Israel for BPH and were quite successful. But the interventional radiologists in general only consider this procedure experimental for BPH.

HOWEVER I know of a few men in the US who have bad varicoceles as well as BPH and when they had their IR doctors embolize the failed veins their BPH disappeared after a year or less.

So what I am calling "Gat Goren" is the bilateral embolization of the failed ISVs (Internal Spermatic Veins) that drain the testes. Interventional radiologists do this procedure every day to treat infertility, usually on younger men. But it is also done to treat painful varicoceles which is what I have and as such is covered by insurance. So first you need to get a scrotal ultrasound to confirm you have these things. Ask for a color doppler ultrasound if possible.

Dr. Gat maintains that every man who has BPH has varicoceles so if the varicoceles are treated then the BPH will go away over time.

But I am really taking liberties to call bilateral embolization of ISVs the Gat-Goren procedure as I am sure Dr. Gat would not be happy with me.

Yet just this bilateral sealing of the ISVs has helped men with BPH so maybe Dr. Gat fine tunes it but the main beneficial effect is still there.

IRs in the US (and elsewhere) do not recognize Gat-Goren as a treatment for BPH since they want more data. So they will not advertise that they treat BPH this way which is why you cannot find anything listed on the web.

It is just me calling my upcoming the Gat-Goren procedure because it includes the main procedure of bilateral embolization of the ISVs. From now on I will write "Gat-Goren" and not Gat-Goren because I see the confusion. Maybe there are little secrets to the procedure that only Dr. Gat knows to make it work, but then other guys were cured just by getting their varicoceles fixed.

My doctot in Detroit is really great but he is very neutral about whether this will fix my BPH. But at least it will relieve me of the discomfort from the varicoceles. Still - he is very keen on this theory and wants to follow me afterwards to see if it works. But the bottom line is that this is an experiment.

Good luck to you. Please consider self-cathing - if I can learn it then anyone can.

Neil

 

Hi Dennis - thanks for your good wishes. I am having it done in Detroit near my home at the hospital. Hope all is well. Aloha!