Understanding Prostate Cancer Surgery
The last thing you want to think about is prostate cancer surgery. With the thought of all the uncomfortable tests and then the surgery itself, which takes organs from your body, scares many people. You never want to think about it or imagine it could happen to you.
The surgery itself is irreversible and over time, the affects this has on ones life will become known. Although the side effects are not life threatening to speak, but if complications arise from other health problems it could be. Men experience a sexual performance problem and in some cases and will need counseling.
What is Prostatectomy This type of procedure consists of removing the entire prostate gland along with nearby tissue that may have cancer cells that have spread to them. The two methods used are perineal and retro public.
The retro public method requires removal of the prostate through a small incision right below your belly button and about an inch above the penis. The other procedure, perineal is done with an incision between the rectum and the scrotum. This way sounds more painful than the retro public method.
Before the prostate cancer surgery, a catheter is inserted in your bladder through the tip of the penis. While the catheter is in place, all urine is drained from the bladder during the surgery and your recovery. Usually two weeks past before having the catheter removed.
Once they remove the catheter, you might experience some problems with urinary control for days, weeks and sometimes months. Not all men experience this unfortunate condition. An exception would be sometimes when you lift things or cough you might notice a little incontinence.
Prostate cancer develops in the prostate glands when there is uncontrolled overgrowth of cancerous cells. Many people who have prostate cancer are from the age of fifty five onwards. Cancer starts to grow and then when it has not been detected, the cancerous cells can be very fatal and sometimes the cancer spreads to other parts of the body. Prostate cancer surgery is an extensive surgery that involves a lot of time and loss of blood. This procedure must be done by a professional surgeon who will take out all the cancerous cells in the prostate. It takes a longer time to recover from prostate cancer surgery. The catheter is taken out after two or three weeks after surgery. Some people have erectile dysfunction disorders after surgery because if the procedure is not well handled, it will affect some sexual sensory nerves.
Benign prostatic hyperplasia is when the prostate gland has a nonmalignant enlargement which is not cancerous. This disease affects older men because it grows slowly from the age of thirty to fifty. Benign prostatic hyperplasia is when the prostate gland starts to increase in size. It presses the urethra which prevents urine from flowing from the bladder to the urethra and outside. This condition can cause urine retention which causes frequent urination at night or during the day. Some symptoms of this disease include; slowed urine flow, frequent urination and difficulty when starting to urinate. The condition can be treated when the size of prostate gland is reduced to its original size with laser technology or surgery. The fatal conditions associated with this condition are when the urine retained causes urinary tract infections or injury to the kidneys.
Laparoscopic prostatectomy is a recent surgical treatment for prostate cancer. This procedure involves small incisions made using robot hands and computer programs to find minute cancer cells in the prostate. Doctors use high tech magnifying glasses to view the procedure and aid and removal of cancerous cells. A person who has undergone laparoscopic prostatectomy knows that the procedure takes 2.5-3.5 hours and there is less bleeding as compared to real surgery done by a surgeon. The patient will only stay in the hospital for a day or two and then check out. Recovery is fast and the catheter is removed after a week. This procedure has less complications after surgery, many people resume sexual activities after a few days. Many people who want short recovery time and less blood loss should consider this effective means of cancer treatment.
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