Holmium Laser Enucleation of Prostate in Management of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia Patients With Predominant Voiding Versus Storage Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms: A Comparative Retrospective Study

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a common condition affecting a large number of men over the age of 50 years and is the major cause of the highly prevalent lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in men of this age group that often necessitate surgical intervention. The LUTS associated with BPH are generally divided into voiding symptoms (slow stream, splitting or spraying, intermittency, hesitancy, straining, terminal dribbling) and storage symptoms (day-time urinary frequency, nocturia, urgency, urinary incontinence). These LUTS are among the most common clinical complaints in adult men with reported increasing prevalence with aging. The storage LUTS may also be termed overactive bladder (OAB) symptoms and are largely encompassed by the term "overactive bladder syndrome" (OABS). While the voiding symptoms are usually more prevalent, the storage symptoms are almost always more bothersome. Associated with a significant burden on both patients and society, these LUTS also have a major impact on patients' quality of life (QoL). As such, The American Urological Association (AUA) has developed the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) as one of the most reliable tools to evaluate the severity of LUTS associated with BPH which, in turn, plays a major role in determining the most appropriate treatment option for BPH.

After being the preferred surgical treatment for BPH patients for more than 30 years, transurethral resection of prostate (TURP) has been replaced by holmium laser enucleation of prostate (HoLEP) as the gold standard surgical treatment for BPH. Introduced in 1995, HoLEP is a minimally invasive surgical procedure that has become the first line treatment of BPH as it provides both effective and safe surgical treatment option for BPH without any size limitation, although at the expense of occasional complications. HoLEP has the advantage of enucleating the enlarging BPH adenoma without destroying the bladder neck thus relieving bladder outflow obstruction (BOO) immediately, safely, and effectively.

Although improvement in both storage and voiding LUTS has been demonstrated after either medical treatment with an alpha-blocker or a 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor or surgical treatment with TURP for BPH patients, few studies have been made to measure the outcomes of HoLEP in BPH-related voiding and/or storage LUTS.

We performed our study with the aim to evaluate and compare the effectiveness and safety of HoLEP in relieving either voiding or storage LUTS in BPH patients.