Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)
(This information is from Dr. Patrick Walsh's Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer)

Benjamin Franklin reportedly suffered from it; so did Thomas Jefferson. So will most men, if they live long enough. This almost inevitable condition is called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), or enlargement of the prostate. The risk of BPH increases every year after age forty: BPH is present in 20 percent of men in their fifties, 60 percent of men in their sixties, and 70 percent of men by age seventy. One-quarter of men with BPH—more than 350,000 a year in the United States alone—eventually will require treatment, some of them more than once, to relieve the urinary obstruction BPH causes.

Before the 1990s, there was no effective medical (as opposed to surgical) treatment for this disorder. Men diagnosed with BPH were usually sent home and told to return when their symptoms were severe enough to warrant surgery. Just a decade ago, an American man had a 25 percent risk of undergoing prostate surgery for benign disease at some point in his life. In fact, BPH is still a common cause of surgery in American men over age fifty-five.

In recent years, as medical therapy has become available, more men have sought treatment to relieve their symptoms. Based on the figures mentioned above, it's likely that after age sixty, a majority of men will either be taking medication for BPH or considering it. However, not all of these men will be helped by the medicine: for men with severe symptoms or men who wait until the disease is far advanced before they seek treatment, surgery is still the best option.

Note: Growth is not the same thing as cancer. BPH is not prostate cancer, and having it doesn't mean a man is more or less likely to get prostate cancer. They're two different diseases—and in some ways, the prostate is almost like two different glands rolled into one. Prostate cancer begins in the outer peripheral zone of the prostate, and grows outward, invading surrounding tissue. BPH begins in a tiny area of the inner prostate called the transition zone, a ring of tissue that makes a natural circle around the urethra. In BPH, the growth is inward toward the prostate's core, constantly tightening around the urethra (the tube that carries urine from the bladder through the prostate to the penis) and interfering with urination. This is why BPH produces such annoying, difficult-to-ignore symptoms—but why prostate cancer is often "silent," producing no symptoms for months or even years. The key word here is benign. (The word hyperplasia simply means an increase in the number of cells in the prostate, which causes it to become enlarged.) By itself, an enlarged prostate causes no symptoms and does no harm. If it weren't for the fact that the prostate encircles the urethra, BPH might never require treatment.







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