Urolift Procedure & Process

I'm Ali Kasraeian. I'm a urologist here in Jacksonville, Florida, and I'm proud to work with my father at Kasraeian Urology. UroLift is a wonderful minimally-invasive way of managing VPA. Instead of removing the issue, you basically use a suture in between two clips in a very quick cystoscopic procedure to put pressure on the inner lobes of the prostate that are causing the obstruction, and essentially, secure them out of the way, like opening up the curtains to look at a stage, for example. It's very minimally invasive, is very effective, and the patients do very well with it, both in terms of outcomes, from a urination standpoint, but in terms of a recovery from a very minimally-invasive outpatient procedure.

Candidates for a UroLift procedure, one that who we have found that they have a functional obstruction. So, our evaluation has shown that the prostate's blocking things, and their bladder has to push very hard to create a weak stream. Their prostates have to be less than 100 grams when we measure it. And obviously, their symptoms are not managed just with medications alone. Some people choose the UroLift simply to get off medications, and that speaks volumes to the minimally-invasive nature of the procedure and how well it's tolerated, as people would pursue something like this to simply get off medication. The other thing to think about with UroLift that is really wonderful and front of mind for a lot of men is it doesn't have impact on erections. And it also doesn't have any impact on external ejaculations.

The minimally-invasive nature of the UroLift procedure allows us to do this both in the hospital setting under anesthesia, but also, in the clinic setting under very minimal anesthesia. And we're using this with a combination of a prostate anesthetic, and also, nitrous oxide. And people can go home from our clinic after about a 30-minute procedure time. And really, the UroLift itself takes about 15 minutes to perform. People can go back to work in a day or two. I usually leave a catheter in for a night in some patients. And if that's the case, we would come back to the clinic the next day to get the catheter out. And people do very well with this. And they're very, very, very quick downtime, meaning they're back to work and back to their life very, very quickly.