ABSTRACT

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is one of the most common health problems in the aging male. BPH is detected in almost 80% of the males and 1/3 of these patients require surgical treatment. Transurethral resection of prostate (TURP) has been accepted as the standard surgical treatment for several years. Long term follow up data has been established in the current literature about TURP and both uroflowmetric measurements and symptom scores were shown to be improved. In recent years, improvement in the surgical skills and development in technology have been resulted in decrease of mortality and morbidity rates of TURP. On the other hand, both medical needs and industrial pressure resulted in development of new endoscopic methods alternative to TURP. Especially in the last 10-15 years, use of TURP decreased whereas use of other endoscopic modalities increased. In this review it was aimed to compare the surgical results and morbidity of TURP and other endoscopic modalities. The literature with high level of evidence were evaluated.

As a result, the minimal invasive methods generally show similar surgical results and have less morbidity. The most important problem about these methods is the lack of long term randomized trials with sufficient number of patients. While deciding for the treatment modality to perform; prostate volume, performance status of the patient, medications used, the experience of the surgeon and patients expectations should all be investigated. Advantages and disadvantages of all methods should be discussed with the patient in detail and final decision should be made thereafter.