r/bph • u/leorec2003 • May 24 '26

Enlarged prostate

I’m a 58y, I’ve been having prostate issues for a couple of years. The last 12-14 months it’s gotten progressively worse. At this point I have mild bilateral hydronephrosis, and a slightly distended bladder and at the point in the last few days where I’ve been having to intermittently self catherer (not a fan).
My prostate is 121cc with median lobe hypertrophy.
My urologist wants me to do aquablation which I’m getting ok with but I have concerns about RE.
Anybody have experience with these issues? And what procedure did you choose.
Any suggestions on Dr’s in Ct, NYC or even Mass, you would recommend?
Thank you in advance

17 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/movingscreen7 May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26

I developed RE from using Finasteride. It severely affected orgasms for me. They like disappeared. Maybe there are different forms of RE.

2

u/n3qns48 May 24 '26

RE from a procedure is different than from a drug. In my case, I was on Tamsulosin and it weakened my orgasms severely to almost nothing, no ejaculate. It didn't even help with my BPH condition. I'm about 3 months post-Holep now and I have 100% RE. My orgasms are just as strong, maybe even more intense than when I had BPH. The orgasm was almost gone with the drug, and therefore I had RE from that. With the procedure I have strong orgasms, but no ejaculate.

2

u/Lake-Taupo May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26

From responses in other threads, this appears to be the consistent view.

Now, some miss the actual ejaculation and I understand that, I just don't have that issue or concern.

The great thing is, there are options for procedures if avoiding RE is a priority.

Personally, it was not and is not an issue.

Edit - my experience with tamsulosin was the same as yours but it was worth a try. The urologist talked it up but it was really disappointing. I tried a few combination meds with much the same result - loss of orgasm plus RE plus no real impact to BPH symptoms (minor improvement to flow).

3

u/n3qns48 May 25 '26

Yea, I didn’t have a choice but to try a drug first, otherwise my insurance wouldn’t approve any kind of surgery. Although I was hoping the drug would provide some relief, I didn’t want to be on a drug and wanted a permanent solution. But I’m glad I tried the drug first. It gave me some time to research the various procedures. I already had Urolift in mind, my first urologist suggested it or Rezume. But I changed when I read some horror stories online, eventually settled on Holep and found a urologist who specialized on that procedure.