Literatus: A safer way to go

WE MENTIONED last month a safe technique in treating acute urinary retention (AUR), which was investigated in the Hennenfent study in 2006. Compared to the 27.1 percent need for surgery within six months after drug therapy using alfuzosin and the need to perform surgery in a total of close to nine percent of patients, this new method allowed patients to avoid surgery for another 2.5 years.

This new procedure is called manual prostatic massage, a technique found in research literature way back in the early 20th century, particularly 1906. It is non-traumatic as it is scalpel-free.

The study published in Medscape General Medicine on Oct. 25, 2006 used an experimental dose of daily prostate massage for four days in the first week; then three times per week thereafter. The prostate is a male gland that produces semen, and can be manually felt a few centimeters from the anal opening.

Bradley Hennenent led the study, in cooperation with physicians Alfred Lazarte and Antonio Feliciano Jr. of the Manila Genitourinary Clinic, Cebu and Manila branches, respectively. They believed that this approach worked because the massage drained the prostate of pus; thus, it improved the chance of going to the bathroom after an AUR episode. And apparently the procedure worked, as far as this study can show.

The good thing about this procedure is that doctors can teach their patients how to perform it themselves. Patients only have to be taught where to locate their prostate gland is; and how the massage must be performed. Then they can do it themselves. They don’t have to go to the doctor’s clinic unless necessary, saving consultation cost in the process.

And since AUR occurs in a third of men when they reach the age of 89, the savings can help the elderly maximize the financial resources available to them in their retirement.

One beauty of medical research, and most research for that matter, is its potential to help the patients weather their health problems, cut their expenses, and improve their quality of life at a time when that quality, as given by Mother Nature, was so rich in youth but has already been dissipated in large measure in advanced age.

“There are things in this world that science can’t explain but which just maybe the human heart can,” wrote Max McCoy in his movie character-based novel, Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs (1996). That applies to both the patient and the physician. And with goodness of heart put into the mix, at times miracles do happen.