What's your experience with TURP procedure for prostate cancer?

"TURP is a medical abbreviation for transurethral resection of the prostate, a surgical procedure that removes part of the prostate gland to treat symptoms of benign prostate disease. It's the most common surgical procedure for benign prostate disease."
Certainly people with prostate cancer can have TURP either before or after diagnosis, but it is not usually directly related to prostate cancer :-).
Of course, if you have a sense of humor, radical (complete) prostatectomy (removal of prostate) has an amazing impact on benign prostate disease (enlargement of the prostate.) Think of it as a pleasant side effect?!

TURP is an old school procedure for benign prostatic enlargement. It’s kind of traumatic - it is a scraping procedure which can involve blood loss and other complications.
Newer forms of treatment use lasers which remove excessive tissue and cauterize at the same time. Personally I had Green Light Laser which was very successful, painless and lasted - right up until the time I was diagnosed with cancer.
The problem with lasers is that they vaporize tissue making biopsy impossible. I might have had cancer 6 years before my actual diagnosis….but we’ll never know. I am not sure if tissue iS analyzed during TURP.
Talk to your urologist - or even better get a second AND THIRD opinion! Best of luck!

heavyphil,
Thank you for your reply and for the information. I am posting for my husband who just had the procedure.
Because he won’t post about it. It seems like it should have been straightforward but for an equipment failure during surgery. The machine that ‘vacuums’ out the debris failed. The hospital had a backup machine which also failed (?!)and a third was sent over from another facility. They had to wake him up while they waited for the third machine so that he wouldn’t be under so long. This was more traumatic than it needed to be. Hard to say how much of recovery delay is due to that.
When I first posted, not realizing that I was in a CA thread, I was asking about what benefits people had experienced from this procedure.

Well, your situation pretty much summed up what a TURP is all about - barring of course the inexcusable equipment failures.
The recovery times for even a ‘good’ TURP are longer than for a laser procedure so one would suspect that your husband’s recovery might take a bit longer than that. Still cannot fathom why this medieval procedure is still being done!

I had TURP surgery after my cancer diagnosis but before radiation. The cancer was actually pressing on the urethra (not BPH) and I was needing to self catheterize daily. My urologist said that if I wanted to stop I would have to have TURP done before radiation as it could not be done afterwards. My radiation oncologist agreed and we delayed the start of radiation until 6 months after TURP. Most uncomfortable side effect is lack of urinary control which lasted about 6 weeks, gradually getting better. Glad I had it done because radiation also affects the urinary tract and I was back to a weak stream for a few months afterwards. Now, 4 months after my last round of radiation to clean up metastacies in my pelvis, things are almost back to normal.

It is important to understand where the blockage is occurring. If it is only the median lobe causing the issue then TURP might be a superior alternative to HoLep or Aquablation. HoLep takes much more prostate material than a limited TURP of the median lobe, unless you find a surgeon who does HoLep of just the median lobe. But even then, HoLep could be overkill as compared to a relatively simple TURP procedure. The TURP of the median lobe only requires a catheter for a day and has a very fast recovery. In addition, because you are left with much more prostate material, the eventual treatment for prostate cancer may not have the complications that you might have if you had done HoLep. If the person has Gleason 6 they have a 50/50 chance of eventually needing treatment for the cancer. In that scenario, doing as little as possible to the prostate can make sense, so that future treatment complications can be minimized. So TURP is still a very effective procedure, as Dr Schultz points out in his videos. Finally, to do HoLep correctly requires significant surgeon skill. There is a limited supply of these doctors.

I had an Aquablation done about a year before I was diagnosed with PCa. It is fundamentally the same as a TURP, just using robotically controlled waterjet to ablate tissue. It fixed years of suffering from lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and had zero effects on sexual function, unlike most other BPH surgeries.

TURPs are effective surgeries for men with severe LUTS. Some people have a negative perception from the "scraping out of tissue" descriptions, but in reality, it's just using electrosurgery tools no different than in surgeries in other parts of the body. Some of the bad perceptions are from surgeons who use the older type of electrode - monopolar, instead of bipolar. Those electrodes do in fact cauterize bleeding arteries.

Unfortunately, none of the surgeries for BPH can eliminate PCAa tumors in the prostate, as they tend to originate in the peripheral zone, not the tissue in which BPH arises -- transition zone.

DADDY’S DRAIN PAINThe bladder - muscular, hollow, balloon-like – is our body’s waste reservoir, designed by the creator to store unwanted fluid that ultimately needs to be expelled. It’s the central piece of a complex excretory system. For some men this structure, usually taken for granted, may abort its role in the daily unwanted fluid management cycle and begin to falter.The male anatomy has several moving parts in addition to the bladder. kidneys, ureters, urethra, prostate gland and Mr. Happy who offers the final firehose delivery. The pissiare revealing a wonderful system that for most of a man’s life functions well … until it doesn’t.What could possibly go wrong? How do I not love thee? Let me count the ways.Well, one way the love ain’t there is the beloved firehose slowly being demoted to a small stream featuring the seepy twins - dribble and trickle. This suggests there is a kink in the line and for aging dudes that crimp is often caused by the prostate gland (aka ‘The Prostate’).The Prostate has a well-known physical analogy - a walnut. It’s similar in size and has two halves. The Prostate also has two sides (lobes) separated by the urethra that was designed by the creator to dispense pee to Mr. Happee. It was not in the original design plan for The Prostate to put a squeeze on the flow that results in many mature men griping about the grip.________________________________________And so, a few years ago I met the fate described here. The twins appeared and I needed to figure out how to liberate the liquid without too much damage to the waterworks. Using a tree analogy there was a forest of possibilities and in the end I chose a method to trim the leaves to allow traffic to flow. I summoned Dick, my urologist. He (who loves to carve) was happy to comply.The pruning day arrived and my lower torso was put into slumber mode (you will feel a pinch) while Dr. Dick sharpened the blade of a long scalpel-like tool that also comprised a light and a camera (film at eleven). The operating room was darkened which highlighted Dick wearing a miners-type headlight and wearing a joker-like smile. “Open wide”, I think I heard him say but maybe that was just an echo from a recent dentist visit. He inserted the instrument at the mercy of my business gaining access to The Prostate. From my perspective it resembled a spear heading the wrong way on a one-way path. The roto-rooting had begun.Being fully awake was surreal. I had wanted to yell, “You’re going to put that thing where??” but I didn’t want to mess with the ambiance. It was a romantic setting, quiet and dim. I expected mood music, but it stayed quiet. If there was music I’d probably hear, ♪ The first cut is the deepest ♪.At some point I did blurt out loud, “Are you done yet?”Dick nodded, “Yup, I believe I have crafted enough clearance.”Praise the God of all prostates, I reflected.I think the doc might have kept on going, mesmerized by the slicing and dicing of my nethers.“That’s a wrap,” Dr. Dick sighed.The lights brightened and the staff were scurried about preparing for the next sculpting. I was wheeled down to a holding area to thaw my lower half which still felt weird. “Where are my legs?” I muttered to the gurney pilot.“I dunno,” he replied. I just drive the stretcher.He didn’t catch the jest.Several hours later my lower half came to life and I realized there was a catheter AND a hose protruding from Sir Happy. This spectacular configuration seemed like an impossible feat. Akin to two huge logging trucks driving side-by-side down a narrow forest road. I did feel a pinch.In order to be discharged from this torture I was required to deliver a set-timed amount of wee-wee to prove the system was back up and running. I achieved that the next day and it felt like I deserved a medal for bravery under fire.And now, finally, the dreaded moment of truth before I could leave. Removal of foreign hardware. I felt another two pinches. As I recall these pinches were elevated to, ‘these extractions will be a tad uncomfortable’.Duh. Ya think?The recovery went well. The unwanted leaves had been trimmed to the forest floor and my firehose returned, analogous to the sound of a gushing waterfall.

Excellent!!

Anyone got information on new BPH methods? Does Urolift work? How to avoid difficult recovery time with TURP. I'm almost 87, difficult LUTS/BPH but no prostate cancer that I know of.