I had RALP 12 months ago at UC Irvine Medical Center. I was 67 Gleason3/4 psa 3 at surgery. My criteria for a surgeon was that they had performed at least a couple thousand of these procedures and they were at a hospital rated as a center of excellence (COE).
I found Dr Ahlering on Google Scholar as I read up on Prostate surgery and side effects. He had been a part of numerous studies about minimizing side effects of surgery. I believe he was head of Urology at the time and had performed several thousand procedures and was an instructor on RALP. I had spoken with another surgeon at a COE in San Diego who had actually performed more procedures and would have been a good choice as well, but I liked Dr Ahlering’s swagger!
When I asked him if it would be him or a Intern doing the procedure, he responded that the Interns would do prep and a couple other things, but that he would be doing “all the tricky parts”. When he asked me what my number one concern was, I said incontinence as I was a professional pilot. He responded “I am really good at that” … I said your hired!
After the medical workup and prior to surgery, he gave me a written estimate of how long I might have incontinence and ED. I think he said “95% continent within 30 days” and ED recovery to 95% of what I was prior to surgery.
After surgery, no incontinence whatsoever,…I threw away a box of pads. I still have some ED at 12 months, but it is steadily improving month by month and I think it will work itself out as predicted. I was told that nerves regenerate at 1/2 to 1mm per day so 12 to 24 months recovery should be expected.
The surgery was scheduled 6 months out so I had time to get in shape for it. I did cardio 5 or 6 times a week, cut down on Carbs. and lost enough weight to fit into the lower end of the body mass index chart. Also
did Kegals. All in all, things turned out OK so far and I get a call from him every 6 months to see how I am doing.