Surgical management of benign prostatic obstruction.

The incidence of transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) and indications for prostatectomy are compared among earlier studies with the preliminary results of a recent national cooperative study of 3,885 patients undergoing transurethral prostatectomies at thirteen health centers in the United States. Clinical evidence indicates that TURP continues to be a successful procedure, with 97 percent of patients doing well in the first four months postoperatively in the most recent study. Although the incidence of TURP-related morbidity has been relatively consistent among three large-scale studies conducted during the past three decades, mortality has steadily declined from 2.5 percent to 0.2 percent.