 It's Redam Sulya on Fever 104 FM. Dr. Ajay Esshetty, he is lead consultant urologist with Manipal Hospitals, Yashwanpur and Hebal. Thank you for joining us, doctor. Say, doctor, if not for a doctor, what would you be? What would be your profession? What line of work would you be doing? Probably playing gully cricket. As a kid, I always wanted to be a bus driver as well. I felt that was the coolest job ever. But you were talking to us about a few passions that you picked up during the pandemic. What were they, any hobbies that you took seriously? Yeah, I picked up a musical instrument just to prove myself wrong that I had absolutely no musical talent inherent. But I think I still agree, I don't have any musical talent. But I did manage to, you know, learn the guitar. And I am a rhythm guitarist now and we have a small band. And we often play maybe, you know, whenever we have time to catch up. Yeah, that's amazing. Hey, guys, you want to see doctors on stage performing and playing music. I managed this band just letting you know this happened right now. You can get in touch with me and we play at weddings as well. Yeah, we do never say never. Never say never. Okay, let's talk about some serious health related matters now prostate disorders. This is a term that we have been hearing very, very a lot of recently. I wanted to speak to you about what are some common conditions affecting prostate health? So for everyone out there, anybody, any male less than the age of 40, you know, typically in the 30s to 40s, if there is a prostate condition that is affecting you, it would be what is called inflammation of the prostate, a condition that you would read up in Google as prostatitis. Beyond the age of 50 is when the prostate starts to enlarge. And that is typically when one would come into the domain of benign prostatic enlargement. Again, the term is BPH. That's a very common term. After the age of 50, one would expect that. We would consider and even consider a diagnosis of cancer in somebody who is beyond 55 or 60. And we will talk about prostate cancer going forward. But these are the three common conditions, prostatitis, benign prostatic enlargement and prostate cancer. How does one go about diagnosis of prostate cancer, doctor? So, prostatic problems, I think the most important thing is don't disregard the signals that the body is giving you. So if you start having symptoms like urinary frequency going up or you suddenly find that the urine flow is slowly starting to get lesser and lesser, that's the body trying to tell you that there's a problem with the prostate. And most people often neglect these early symptoms and don't make a visit to the doctor. So whenever you have a symptom like that, just go meet your friendly local neighborhood urologist who may consider certain tests and pick up the problem and start you off on medications at an early stage. That's when they're most likely to work. Right. It's not necessary that everyone needs surgery. Medication can also solve the problem. It will. It will as long as the problem is diagnosed early, which again is in our country, given the fact that people don't come in early. The ones that end up on the surgical table are people who have come so late in their disease that medications will not work or they've come so late, they've already developed complications. Otherwise, if you're picked up early, medications will manage to avoid surgery. Okay. Can you give us a fair understanding of how the surgery actually works in case of benign prostate surgery required? So benign prostate hyperplasia, VPH surgeries, you will read of two common surgeries being done these days, both of which are minimally invasive. There will be no external cuts on the body. The names of the surgeries are bipolar resection of the prostate, which is by far the commonest surgery that is advocated for prostate. And the second technology which is now becoming very popular is laser enucleation of the prostate using either Holmium or Thulium lasers. What I want to tell everybody is laser is the new kid on the block, but that doesn't mean that that's the best for everybody. Laser is ideal only when the prostate size is huge. Anything between 80 to 100 grams or above. Yes, laser has an advantage. It also has an advantage in patients in whom they are on blood thinners for a heart condition or a brain condition that you cannot stop. The risk of bleeding is high and that's where lasers have an advantage. Otherwise, anything other than this, a bipolar resection is more than satisfactory. Lovely. In terms of prevention, how can one go about it and what would be a few tips that you can probably share with us? Yeah. So again, prostate growth is controlled by genetics and that is nothing that one can do anything about. So more than prevention, I think it's important to detect the problem early because genetics is not in your control. Lifestyle here has no role to play in prostate. It's purely genetics. So I would focus more on early detection so that you can start treatment early so one can avoid surgery and all the complications of the disease per se in the future. Dr. Ajay Shetty, he is lead consultant urologist with Manipal Hospitals. We will be talking about cancer when we come back. Keep it tuned right here and thank you so very much for watching.