A man may have difficulty urinating or may have frequent and urgent needs to urinate. These signs could point to prostate cancer. A disorder in which the prostate enlarges, BPH is not cancer and does not cause cancer. It is much more common than prostate cancer, affecting greater than half of American men in their 60s. Up to 90 percent of men over 80 have some BPH symptoms.
Doctors can detect the condition through a digital rectal exam.
Other tests can determine severity. Because the prostate surrounds the urethra, any enlargement can choke off urine flow. Sometimes the prostate is only mildly enlarged, and symptoms may subside or not be noticeable. But if the urine stream has been reduced to a trickle, if strain is necessary to start the stream, or if there are frequent urges to urinate, especially at night, treatment is probably necessary. The doctor threads a balloon-tipped catheter into the urethra to the point of blockage and inflates the balloon, stretching the urethra and allowing increased urine flow.