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Urolift

What is Urolift?

Urolift is a new minimally invasive operation for treatment of symptomatic benign prostate hyperplasia (enlarged prostate) in men.

Urolift Procedure

The UroLift System consists of a delivery device and tiny permanent implants. The implant is made up of standard surgical implantable materials: a nitinol capsular tab, a stainless steel urethral tab, and polyester suture that holds the two tabs together. It works by directly opening the prostatic urethra, the implants are designed to hold the enlarged prostate tissue out of the way, like tiebacks on a window curtain. There is no cutting, heating, or ablating of prostate tissue.

The implants can be removed at any time by cutting the sutures in the prostatic urethra. It does not preclude from future prostatic surgery.

Urolift is designed for patients with symptomatic BPH who are looking for an alternative to drugs but want to avoid the fertility and ejaculatory side effects of permanent BPH surgery.

The implants are not suitable for everyone, it works best for patients with enlarged prostate lateral lobes, but is not suitable for patients with an enlarged prostate median lobe. It is also not suitable for patients with very big prostates.

Advantages of Urolift

The main advantage of Urolift is the preservation of ejaculatory function. Fertility and antegrade ejaculation are preserved. This is a unique benefit of the UroLift System treatment compared with other BPH treatments such as TURP, HOLEP, and even medications. Because the operation doesn’t involve cutting or ablation of the prostate, almost all patients can go home the same day without a catheter. Recovery is usually quicker compared to other forms of prostate surgery.

Urolift surgery will improve flow rate by about 4ml/sec, this is usually better than the improvement from medical therapy (2ml/sec), but not as good as HOLEP or TURP (11ml/sec). There may be blood in the urine and pain while passing urine in the first week after the operation. Micturition urgency, pelvic pain, and urge incontinence have also been reported. These symptoms can last for 2-4 weeks after the operation.