What else needs special attention when patients are successfully discharged from the hospital after radical prostate cancer surgery?
Summarized, there are 3 points:
Pay attention to urinary incontinence
After the catheter is removed, the patient may experience urinary incontinence, which means that the urine will be uncontrollable and flow out to wet the pants on its own.
This is caused by damage to the external urethral sphincter during the procedure. This often happens and with some training of the pelvic floor muscles, it usually returns to normal on its own in 2 to 3 days, and in some cases in 2 to 3 weeks.
Very few patients who have not returned to normal urination for more than six months are experiencing true urinary incontinence, which is more problematic to treat.
Note the difficulty in urination
Some patients experience difficulty urinating and a thin urine line, which is due to anastomotic stricture.
A regular urethral dilatation is needed after cystourethroscopy to detect anastomotic stricture.
Take care of regular rechecking of PSA
The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) status needs to be reviewed periodically after discharge. If the surgery is complete, the postoperative PSA is generally less than 0.01 ng/ml.
Postoperative PSA testing can be used as a prognostic indicator for patients with prostate cancer, and if PSA shows signs of persistent elevation, combined endocrine therapy or external radiation therapy may be required.