Finding Help for an Enlarged Prostate

Like many men, Mervyn Campbell suffered from symptoms of benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH), also known as an enlarged prostate. He found a solution with a Columbia interventional radiologist.

“When Mervyn first came in, he was miserable,” says Joshua Weintraub, MD, professor of radiology and chief of the Division of Vascular and Interventional Radiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “He was getting up five times in the middle of the night to urinate; he was exhausted. He came in looking for alternatives.”

Benign prostate hypertrophy affects most men at some point in their lives. With BPH, the prostate becomes enlarged and causes symptoms such as frequent urination, difficulty urinating, and incontinence. No treatment is necessary unless the symptoms interfere with daily activities and sleep.

“I started getting symptoms, but I didn’t know they were symptoms [of BPH],” Campbell says. “It just wears you out. You get tired, you get slow, you get heavy, you get stressed out. You start falling apart.”

Given the size of his prostate, Campbell wasn’t a good candidate for minimally invasive urologic procedures, Weintraub says. But he was a perfect candidate for prostate artery embolization.

Prostate artery embolization

Prostate artery embolization is a nonsurgical procedure performed by interventional radiologists that shrinks the prostate by blocking its blood supply. When the prostate shrinks, it allows urine to come out more easily.

The patient, Weintraub says, “was really worried about side effects, incontinence and impotence, but that’s one of the nice things we see with prostate artery embolization: Those side effects are extraordinarily rare.”

Campbell says the procedure was amazing: “Within a week, I was sleeping through the night, I could have sex with no problem.”

“He called me two weeks after the procedure, telling me that I had changed his life,” Weintraub says. “It was one of the days that when you go home, after a long day at the hospital, you think, man, I really made a difference.”