Prostatectomy is usually performed to men who have damaged bladder or greatly enlarged prostate gland or any other complications such as urethral narrowing or presence of kidney stones.
In this surgical procedure, a part or entire prostate gland that is responsible for severe urinary problems is removed forever.
Prostate gland completely surrounds the urethra, the tube that drains urine from the bladder out the penis.
So, any enlargement in the prostate gland or growth of tumor restricts the normal urine flow and causes severe problems such as frequent, painful or difficult urination.
So, when the condition turns out serious, your doctor can recommend surgery to remove prostate gland. There are several ways to perform prostatectomy. Some of the most important methods used can mainly include:
Methods used to perform prostatectomy!
Open surgery:
In this open surgery, your surgeon uses an incision to reach prostate gland. Depending on the enlargement of prostate gland and presence of tumor, this incision is made either in your lower belly or in the groin between the anus and penis.
If the incision is made in the groin, it is referred as perineal approach. If your lymph nodes are also affected with the tumor, then a separate incision is made to remove lymph nodes for testing, where as if the incision is made in your lower belly, it is referred as retropubic approach.
A radical approach in combination with retro pubic approach is the most common treatment used for prostate cancer. The recovery time after retropubic approach can be much longer than perineal approach.
In this type of surgery, your surgeon makes several small incisions in the lower belly. Next, laparoscope, a light viewing instrument is inserted into one of the incisions.
Other than laparoscope, several other special instruments are used to reach and remove the prostate gland through the incisions.
Laparoscopic prostatectomy is relatively new technique used in the removal of prostate gland and it is not yet widely available at all health centers. In this surgery, you can lose very small amounts of blood and also there is chance for you to recover faster than other methods used in the prostate gland surgery.
These are two commonly suggested methods to perform prostatectomy. At times, some tumors can be removed using a nerve sparing, which mainly involves careful cutting around those nerves to leave them intact.
This particular technique, at times preserves the man’s ability to have an erection. So, before you consider any of these procedures, it is always preferred to ask questions to your surgeon regarding the side-effects and other health problems involved with prostatectomy.
