Symptoms of Benign Prostate Enlargement

by | Cancer Care, Men's Health

Benign prostate enlargement or benign prostatic hyperplasi, has two different types of symptoms. We can call them obstructive symptoms.

Imagine you have a tube that’s being constricted, because this is what happens when your prostate is enlarged. As a result you can get difficulty starting the stream, you can get a slow urinary stream. You might have a flow that’s intermittent or cuts out while you’re actually urinating. Towards the end of the flow you might have some dribbling. Another symptom is you may also feel that you haven’t actually emptied the bladder properly. This is because you have this increased resistance caused by the extra prostatic tissue at the base of the bladder. So they’re the prostate obstructive symptoms.

But we think that those that the change in the bladder outlet can then also cause changes to the bladder function itself. As a result, you can have irritative symptoms such as urgency of urination, when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go or frequency of urination. The other symptom benign prostate enlargement is nocturia, which is probably the commonest of all in fact.

This is going to the toilet to urinate at nighttime. Usually, once a night is classified as pretty normal, but if it’s twice or more then it can be quite a bother to men, especially if they find it hard to get back to sleep.

Associate Professor Dr. Jeremy Grummet.