What Is Your International Prostate Sympton Score?

Thought it would be interesting and educational for us to share our International Prostate Symptom Score (I-PSS), as well as our Quality of Life (QL) score  both currently and prior to any operation, procedure or drug intervention you may have had. . Feel free to include as little or as much background as possible. 

You can compute your I-PSS here –

http://www.urospec.com/uro/Forms/ipss.pdf

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I'll start --

I-PSS Score pror to being scheduled for TURP: 33 (severe)

QL Score: 6   (age 64)

Current I-PSS Score: 9 (mild/moderate) (age 66)

QL Score 1-2

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Discussion:  Looking back, with a score of 33 (severe), I definitely waited too long before doing anything.

I was probably retaining upwards of 500cc of urine at all times (I have a bladder diverticulum so that didn’t help). My kidney scan at that point showed Hydronephrosis (water in the kidney) in both kidneys due to fluid back up because of my retention and resulting back pressure.

The only drug I took was Flomax (tamsulosin) which helped only minimally for a short period of time. I discontinued it because the positive effects seem to have worn off and I didn’t like the sfx including retrograde ejaculation.

I ended up deciding to postpone my TURP operation and instead started a program of self-catherization (CIC).  Recently, I have been able to decrease the frequency of my catherizations from 6 a day (two years ago) to maybe only once every week or so. It’s hard to say if this improvement is permanent or not, as very little if no data.

Overall, I am extremely pleased, although as typical with CIC, my bladder is usually colonized which means positive for bacteria, however asymptomatic. I also frequently have mild hematuria (blood in urine) which again is common both with CIC and an enlarged prostate. My urologist is not concerned with either the colonization or hematuria.

Unlike with some operations, my improvement has been very gradual over a 2 year time period. During that time,  I was doing CIC 3-6 times a day so it would be impossible to compute an accurate I-PSS score during that period. I will say, however, that once I got used to CIC, it was really no big deal. 

My intent was to continue with CIC for life or until a new operation came around that I liked. Honestly, I am surprised that I have been able to almost discontinue the CIC, because the doctors told me this hardly ever happens. Because I don’t believe in miracles, my guess if I could rehabilitate my bladder though CIC,  so can others, it’s just that the dotors rarely prescribe it for so long, so when they say “it hardly ever happens” I don’t think it’s based on science but simply conjecture.

Jim

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