Father Think of your back, I feel the toughness Help touch your hands, I feel the hardship Unconsciously your sideburns showed white hair Without saying a word you added wrinkles on the corners of your eyes My old father, my most beloved person …… Many middle-aged and elderly fathers are hiding a secret that they can’t tell, and they think that men are too embarrassed to tell this kind of thing, but health is the top priority, and children can’t ignore this major health hazard: benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). My father is 65 years old. Is there anything I should pay attention to in terms of my health? In addition to preventing diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, BPH also requires attention. Because the prostate gland grows larger with age, if it causes urinary symptoms such as increased nocturia (commonly known as nighttime urination), frequent urination, urinary urgency, and straining to urinate, it will seriously affect the patient’s work life, and it will become what is known medically as “Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia” (BPH). Benign prostatic hyperplasia, is it because “benign” do not need to see a doctor? No! When BPH develops to a serious degree, it can lead to serious complications, including hematuria, full bladder incontinence, bladder stones, kidney damage, etc. It can also lead to acute urinary retention, where the patient’s bladder fills up with urine that cannot be discharged, causing pain and swelling, and often requiring surgery to relieve the pain. If the symptoms of BPH are found, which department should I go to for medical treatment and can it be cured? Once the symptoms of BPH are detected, don’t be embarrassed to open your mouth and communicate with your family or go to the doctor, patients should go to the urology department of a regular hospital as soon as possible. What is BPH? Prostatic hyperplasia, benign prostatic hyperplasia, and prostatic hypertrophy all refer to the same disease, which is due to the hyperplasia of prostate tissues, which leads to an increase in volume, and then cause a series of clinical symptoms. If a man is older than 50 years of age and develops dysuria, the most important cause is prostatic hyperplasia. Through large-scale population surveys, 80% of men will eventually develop prostate enlargement with age, and about two-thirds of these men (or 50% of the total population) will experience an increase in size, and about half of these enlargements will require medication or surgical treatment. What are the clinical signs of prostate enlargement? Despite being a benign disease, prostatic hyperplasia is a progressive disease, meaning that it gets worse if there is no intervention. First of all, it will cause bladder outlet obstruction, local urethral mucosa congestion, affecting bladder function, resulting in urinary urgency, frequent urination, frequent nocturia, straining to urinate, prolonged urination time, and a feeling of incomplete urination, etc. You may go to the toilet frequently, afraid to go out. You may have frequent trips to the toilet, be afraid to go out of the house, need to wait for a while to pass urine and have to exert yourself, get up at night resulting in poor sleep, which affects your quality of life. If left untreated, these symptoms will be aggravated even further, and you may urinate in dribbles, have sudden onset of inability to urinate (urinary retention), complications of bladder stones, recurrent blood in urine, recurrent urinary tract infections, which in turn affects the functioning of the kidneys. What treatments are available? 1) Observation, suitable for patients with mild symptoms, and under the guidance of a doctor; 2) medication: including alpha-blockers, 5 alpha reductase inhibitors, botanical preparations, Chinese herbal medicine, and identification of symptoms; 3) surgical treatments, such as transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP), laser surgery and so on. Note: 0—7 are mild symptoms; 8—19 are moderate symptoms; 20—35 are severe symptoms.