Bill Thorpe and Dan Keller, Nursing 241, Assessment, Prof. Anna Kwong, USF, Fall Semester, 2005.

http://www.nursing.keller.com/bph/

Your Aging Prostate

BPH -- What Is It? Who Gets It?

  • As men age, their prostate glands often become enlarged.
  • This is termed Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) and is harmless.
  • In a few cases the growth can be malignant so it's important to check it annually after age 50.
  • According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), BPH affects more than 50% of men over age 60 and 90% of men over the age of 70.

What to Watch for -- Symptoms of BPH

  • Blood in the urine (i.e., hematuria), caused by straining to void
  • Dribbling after voiding
  • Feeling that the bladder has not emptied completely after urination
  • Frequent urination, particularly at night (i.e., nocturia)
  • Hesitant, interrupted, or weak urine stream caused by decreased force
  • Leakage of urine (i.e., overflow incontinence)
  • Pushing or straining to begin urination
  • Recurrent, sudden, urgent need to urinate

Diagnosis of BPH

Men over 50 should have these tests annually:
  • Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test
  • Rectal exam in which the prostate is palpated

palpation of the prostate gland

The Rectal Exam

What your doctor or nurse is looking for:
  • Does the prostate protrude into the rectum?
    • If so, it is enlarged.
  • It should have no bogginess, tenderness, or nodules.
  • What if any of these conditions is present, or the PSA test result is high?
    • The next diagnostic procedure is prostate ultrasound testing.

Do it yourself!
Palpate these two prostates.
Whose is enlarged, Tim's or Jim's?

References

Potter and Perry (2005). Fundamentals of Nursing, 6th Ed. St. Louis, MO: Mosby.

Enlarged Prostate, in Medline, a service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)