All About Aquablation® Therapy for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)

Thanks to your benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), urination becomes problematic. You get up frequently throughout the night needing to urinate, you’re unable to get a good stream, and your bladder feels full more often than not — these are just some of the urinary symptoms of BPH.

What they all have in common is that they can impact your quality of life.

As urology experts, the team here at Arizona Urology has extensive experience helping patients overcome the urinary symptoms of BPH. One treatment that we’re particularly excited about is called Aquablation® therapy.

Behind BPH

BPH affects millions of men in the United States — half of the men over 50 years have BPH, and this number increases with age. 

Your prostate is a small gland that encircles your urethra, and it’s responsible for producing semen. During puberty, your prostate grows to prepare for reproduction. Unfortunately, this initial growth spurt is followed by continuous growth throughout your life.

This is why the prevalence of BPH is in lockstep with age — 50% of men in their 50s and 80% of men in their 80s.

While benign, this growth can squeeze your urethra, which causes problems in your urinary tract and leads to urinary symptoms. As a result, approximately one-quarter of men over 50 who develop urinary symptoms due to BPH require surgical intervention.

A minimally invasive approach to BPH

The goal of surgical intervention when it comes to BPH is to remove excess prostate tissue to allow urine to flow freely through your urethra.

While there are many ways in which we can achieve this goal, Aquablation offers a unique approach.

First, using the Aquablation system, we don’t need to make any incisions to resect your prostate as we access the gland through your urethra.

Next, we use a specialized camera called a cystoscope that, combined with live ultrasound imaging, gives us a clear view of your prostate. With this imaging, we create a surgical map of your prostate resection.

Working at a console, we use robotic technology to guide the scope and deliver jets of heat-free water to remove excess prostate tissue, following the surgical map. This blend of human experience and robotic precision allows us to remove prostate tissue quickly and accurately. In fact, with Aquablation, we can perform the resection procedure in as little as 10 minutes.

Advantages of Aquablation

Aside from the minimally invasive approach of Aquablation, the technology offers several advantages over traditional surgical techniques.

Thanks to our ability to view your entire prostate and create a surgical map, we’re only removing what’s necessary, meaning that we can avoid removing areas of your prostate that control sexual function. 

The manufacturer conducted studies affirming that nearly all men who underwent the Aquablation procedure preserved ejaculatory function. In addition, there were no reports of any other type of sexual malfunction. 

After the Aquablation procedure, 99% of men did not encounter any incontinence issues.

If you’d like to learn more about this approach to treating the urinary symptoms of BPH, contact one of our locations in Goodyear, Gilbert, or Glendale, Arizona, to set up a consultation today.