Prostatectomy

Do you have a problem urinating? Or having a pain during urination? Do you have blood in the urine? How often do you go to toilet for urinating in the night time? Frequently? Do you have interrupted urine flow? Do you have pain in the lower back, hips, or upper thigh? Or do you have problem or pain in ejaculation? If you have these problems then it’s a time to review your health status. Well these are clear symptoms of the prostate cancer. So better consult the doctor and do some screening tests. Ladies don’t need to worry for this as this is just a male’s problem.

I am going on the training in hospital since six months. I still remember the first day’s that operation that the one old man around 60-year-old patient had, TURP (transurethral prostatectomy). I was very curious about that operation, so I asked with my mentor and she explained me very well. Since this is the problem for men only I was bit more interested in it and I tried to find out as much as I can. Through my study I found out that prostatectomy is full or partial removal of the prostate, the small walnut sized gland in the groin that produces fluid in the male semen. Since the prostate completely surrounds the urethra, the tube from where the urine from bladder comes to the penis, any abnormalities or the tumor or enlargement in prostate will cause pressure in the urethra and people will feel difficulty urinating, pain during urination etc. If condition is not treated at time then the probable of spreading of tumor to the bladder is possible and may lead to death in chronic condition. At first I use to think that ladies are more prone to the problems as they have breast cancer, uterus cancer than the males and they should take care of their health a lot, now I am very much frightened with this prostate cancer. This is solely males’ problem and this is very often in the male who does not care on their habitual. If patient is more engaged with multiple sex partners, there is the probable of the STDs and along with it prostate cancer is also included in it.

When patient will have prostate cancer then doctor would recommend the surgery. Basically TURP (transurethral prostatectomy), perineal prostatectomy, and retropubic and suprapubic prostatectomy are the common surgery performed for prostate cancer. Among those surgery TURP is most popular among them as they take less time (about 30-60 minutes) for surgery and heals up the wounds faster (in 2 days of hospital stay) in comparison to other which takes 3-4 hours of surgery and 6 days of hospital stay.

It seems very easy when we hear that prostatectomy takes only of 2 days to heal and seems the minor surgery as it takes only an hour in maximum in TURP, but in another side it has lots of risk factors along with it. Risk factor would be temporary or permanent impotence. If the doctor left out some cancerous cell accidently then it would lead to cancer very soon.

Not only this much after the surgery we will have problem holding urine for certain days. The patient will be hanged with Foley catheter and drainage tube for some days which is very uncomfortable.