Is there any potential role for the elastography on the evaluation of clinical success of prostate artery embolization (PAE) on the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH)

Abstract

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a very common condition in the male. It typically occurs in the sixth and seventh decades. Actually BPH is a histologic finding that becomes a clinical entity if and when it is associated with subjective symptoms. Not all men with histologic BPH will have significant lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and other men who do not have histologic BPH will develop. In fact LUTS are also present in other diseases such as infection and cancer of the prostate, urethral stricture, etc. Traditionally, symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia is treated with either medical therapy or surgery. Among prostate-directed treatment modalities, prostate artery embolization (PAE) is the less invasive non pharmaceutical treatment. Initial studies showed that PAE led to reduction of the prostatic volume, symptom remission and improvements in quality of life. As a relatively new procedure, few data exist to clearly determine the exact mechanism(s) by which PAE achieve the above results.