Anesthesia-free procedures for benign prostate obstruction: worth it?

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Perhaps, 30% of patients with benign prostate obstruction experience no symptom relief with drug therapy, necessitating surgical intervention. General anesthesia can be too dangerous for elderly or frail men, making local anesthesia desirable. Such minimally invasive procedures may offer time-saving, effective, gentle, and well tolerated alternatives. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent interest has focused on the mechanical devices and intraprostatic injections. The commercially available UroLift system demonstrates promising short-term data in randomized multicenter trials. Rezum steam injection therapy is intriguing, although currently study-based with limited data. NX1207 and PRX302 are new intraprostatic injection drugs demonstrating interesting results in phase I and II studies, whereas conflicting results surround the prostatic injection of botulinum toxin A. For transurethral microwave therapy, definitive evaluations regarding the treatment of chronic urinary retention in nonsurgical patients are ongoing. SUMMARY: Although none of these minimally invasive procedures must be performed under general anesthesia, all require local anesthesia with possible sedation. In most studies, pain therapy management is rudimentary or not described. Although good short-term results are described, no long-term data are available.

Novel low-cost prostate resection trainer-description and preliminary evaluation.

BACKGROUND: Transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) is a challenging operation for residents with limited endoscopic experience. A number of virtual TURP simulators have been validated in the past. This study is the first description and preliminary evaluation of a non-virtual, low-cost TURP trainer as a teaching tool for residents in urology. METHODS: Dr K. Forke's prostatic resection trainer (PRT; LS 10-2/S, Samed GmbH, Dresden, Germany) was tested during the surgical training of a resident. Under the supervision of an experienced senior surgeon, three aspects were examined: the resection trainer's approximation to reality, the ease of instruction, and the potential capability to improve surgeons' psychomotor abilities with regard to the three-dimensional (3D) guidance of the instrument. The improvement in resection speed (RS) of residents with no PRT training (control group) was also compared to the results of the PRT-trained resident. RESULTS: During the PRT training, the resident displayed clear improvement in resection quality (RQ) and a 27% increase in RS (p = 0.03). In the post-training stage, the PRT-trained resident showed a more constant progress rate, to a maximum RS of 0.37 g/min (35% increase; p = 0.01), whereas the control group displayed varied RS learning curves. Composed of a synthetic material, which can be resected by standard instruments, the trainer offers a haptical experience that is particularly realistic and may provide an increased learning rate. CONCLUSION: From the findings, we conclude that this novel PRT is suitable for daily use and offers an effective and more affordable alternative to virtual simulators. Further validation studies will follow and new fields of application will be tested.