Prostate Enucleation With Intravesical Botox Injections in Treating Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia and Bladder Overactivity : A Randomized Controlled Trial

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is the most common benign neoplasm in men. Almost 90% of men in their 70s report lower urinary tract symptoms related to BPH. These symptoms carry a significant negative impact on the patients' quality of life.

Despite the wide availability of surgical offerings to relieve bladder outlet obstruction such as transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP), Thulium Laser Enucleation of the Prostate (ThuLEP), and prostatectomy, many patients still suffer from persistent LUTS after undergoing these.

A study describing postoperative outcomes following HoLEP revealed that patients with severe lower urinary tract symptoms, storage-positive sub-score, and high maximum urinary flow rate before the surgery were affected by a rebound of mainly storage symptoms 6-8 weeks after HoLEP and prolonged recovery from LUTS with 7.4% of them presenting for persistent urge complaints.

Optimizing the management approach for these patients has been limited by lack of high level evidence-based recommendations and expert consensus. Intravesical botox injections are well-established therapeutic options for several urinary disorders. The current practice offers intravesical botox injections to patients who suffer from persistent urinary symptoms few months after their BPH procedure. This study aims to evaluate if giving botox injections at the time of the HoLEP surgery would yield a better outcome than performing the two procedures separately at different times (few months apart).

The concomitant use of botox injection during bladder de-obstructing procedures has been previously studied in TURP and have showed a significant reduction of incontinence episodes and OAB symptoms in the group that were treated with botox injections after 36 weeks post TURP. This data may suggest promising potential of this intervention in managing persistent OAB symptoms in patients with BOO. However, the efficacy of combining HoLEP and bladder Botox injections has not been systematically studied and evaluated.