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PROSTATITIS
Prostatitis is poorly understood
and there is little agreement as to what causes it. It can affect
adult men of all ages. The
symptoms are sometimes vague and tend to occur as irritation, or
pain, in and around the pelvic area. The apparent source of the
discomfort may be in the testes, the penis, the perineum or the
lower back. Discomfort can also be experienced during ejaculation.
There are no uniformly agreed upon diagnostic or treatment protocols
for chronic nonbacterial prostatitis, the most common form of prostatitis.
The term prostatitis actually encompasses four disorders:
+ Acute bacterial
prostatitis is
the least common of the four types but also the easiest to diagnose
and treat effectively. Men with
this disease often have chills, fever, pain in the lower back and
genital area, urinary frequency and urgency often at night, burning
or painful urination, body aches, and a demonstrable infection
of the urinary tract, as evidenced by white blood cells and bacteria
in the urine. It is treated with an appropriate antibiotic.
+ Chronic bacterial prostatitis is also relatively uncommon. It
is acute prostatitis associated with an underlying defect in the
prostate,
a focal point for bacterial persistence in the urinary tract. Effective
treatment usually requires identifying and removing the defect
and then treating the infection with antibiotics. However, antibiotics
often do not cure it.
+ Chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain
syndrome is the most
common but least understood form of the disease. It is found in
men of
any age; symptoms go away and then return without warning. Chronic
prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome may be inflammatory or
non-inflammatory. In the inflammatory form, urine, semen, and other
fluids from the prostate show no evidence of a known infecting
organism but do contain cells the body usually produces to fight
infection. In the non-inflammatory form, no evidence of inflammation,
including infection-fighting cells, is present.
+ Asymptomatic inflammatory prostatitis is the diagnosis when the
patient does not complain of pain or discomfort but has infection-fighting
cells in his semen. Doctors usually find this form of prostatitis
when looking for causes of infertility or testing for prostate
cancer.
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