[Benign prostatic hyperplasia: prostatectomy and alternatives].

Benign prostatic hyperplasia is a common disease of men and will lead in most cases to micturition difficulties. Up to now 2 or 4 of 10 men in their sixties are operated for BPH. As standard treatment we know the transurethral resection of the prostate and in some cases of very big adenomas the open adenomectomy carried out in a suprapubic or retropubic way. However, in view of a rare, but as a result of these treatments appearing morbidity we have to ask ourselves whether the surgical resection of the obstructive prostatic tissue remains the only way of treatment. For several years now apart from drug therapy there have also been applied less invasive alternatives. Whether these alternatives of little side effect and further complications are equally effective for the treatment of the obstructive BPH is to verify. This paper provides a general view of the possibilities of the surgical interventions as well as of their alternatives. Because of a lack of dates as to the efficiency of particular procedures a final judgement is outstanding in most cases. Where possible we hear of particular alternatives, though fully promoted, being nothing but a passing tendency. This is certainly true of the hyperthermy, the balloon dilatation and the urethral implants. These by now various conspicuous necrotising procedures (transurethral microwave thermotherapy, laser-ablation, high intensity focused ultrasound, transurethral needle-ablation) are by now in prospective random studies still subject to extensive clinical tests. The question whether one of these alternatives will one day be apt to exceed the TURP as "golden standard" of BPH-treatment, that remains as far as now the question to be put. The advantages of the necrotising procedures, at present highly recommended, consist in the first place of a rare intra- and postoperative morbidity with a simultaneous lack of mortality. These procedures can be performed as a outpatient or as a short stationary treatment and sometime even under local anaesthesia.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)