Injections into Prostate
My husband suffered for years with chronic prostatitis. He had to be on antibiotics or he would come down with a fever and flu type symptoms. In doing research about chronic prostatitis I found this site http://www.pioa.org/prostatits.html. This doctor is in Ventura, California. We flew into Santa Barbara and drove to Ventura. My husband had had chronic prostatitis for so many years he had multiple calcifications and his prostate was very enlarged. In fact he had had a TURP two years before that probably was not necessary because of the swollen condition of his prostate.
We went to Dr. Bahn for three injections, two weeks apart, in that time the size of his prostate decreased 50%. He went off all antibiotic after the second injection and has remained off them. The injections were mildly uncomfortable but not painful. In two weeks the constant pain on sitting etc. was gone. After two months he felt some discomfort return so we went for a 4th injection. The injections and ultrasound were very reasonable in price.
My husband has remained symptom free and has not had to take antibiotics for a full year. He is now having a slight relapse and has had to go back on to antibiotics. We have an appointment for another injection but he remained symptom free, antibiotic free for an entire year. Dr. Bahn had one other patient that had to return a year later and then did not have any further trouble. I think when there are calcifications present they act as areas that hide bacteria. This has been such a help to my husband I wanted others to know about this. So if drainage doesn't seem to be helping there is another treatment to bring relief. I have no idea why more urologists do not do this procedure. Some I am sure are afraid of doing things outside the "norm" in such a suit happy world but it does bring relief.
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Young, Swedish patient with opinion on injections
Hi everyone! I'll start with a brief introduction to my case, before the part on antibiotic injections which I do believe interest a lot of people.
I am a 24 year old male from Sweden, and I got my first prostate infection at about 21. Realizing afterwards that I've had it for a while, I started to seek medical care once the symptoms started to get unbearable, but Swedish healthcare is extremlly restrictive with antibiotics and I was denied it for months despite several visits to different doctors, and an extremlly symptomatic situation. At last, almost begging on my knees, I got two weeks of cipro, and bought another 4 weeks of cipro on the black market (..).
This cleared my infection up and restored me 100% - with one exception. I seem to always get re-infected when having unprotected sex, with otherwise non-pathogenic bacteria naturally found in the vagina, as do many prostatitis patients. I cleared up another infection a year later with 10 days of antibiotics, luckily - but another year later, never failing with antibiotics - I took several too short courses with ciprofloxacine and doxycykline, making the bacteria resistant to various levels to those two precious prostatitis agents.
I tried many other antibiotics on the market, and responded to all of them targeting gram-negatives, but nothing eradicated the infection completely, probably because the infection also had spread and severely affected my right seminal vesicle. Despite living in the capital of Stockholm, there is no medical attention to prostatitis at all, and all of the 10-15 doctors I visited, including a few urologists, kept sending me home claiming I did not have an infection as "antibiotics didn't help", also telling me I should "go home and learn to live with it".
A year later of failed oral antibiotics (mostly bought on the black market) even when overdosing and combining them, I decided upon going to Italy for injections, and let me start by saying this;
Injections DO work. It is a valid treatment option for bacterial prostatitis, and should probably be done in all severe, treatment-resistant cases, before the bacteria causes irreversible damage or fails to respond even to injections.
Whether massage or injection protocols, there seems to be massive critic to these methods, as they don't cure everyone (in opposite to what other prostatitis treatment?). People seem to say that it either "does work" or "doesn't work", but there is probably a big gray zone in between where many patients including myself are.
I underwent a procedure of three injections with 10 days in between. At my first visit, no bacterial testing had been done but the doctor claimed I had chlamydia judging by the pattern of my calcifications. I know for sure, 100% that my infection is not chlamydial and started dropping many strong arguments for it, but the doctor wouldn't listen and still gave me an injection with the old chlamydia-agent rifampicin, with a little mix of cipro (resistance!) into it.
I got slow response and started to relapse at about day 6-7. At my second visit, the PCR-tests for chlamydia was negative (no cultures on gram- was done!), but the doctor would still want to use rifampicin. However, it was out of stock and I got amikacin + cipro instead. This improved me GREATLY, the result was INSTANT and my symptoms were 95% down for a full 7 days, until I once again started to relapse from my right seminal vesicle.
At my last visit, I suggested that we continue the treatment with a forth injection after 6 days instead, with the same antibiotics, but I was denied this. The rifampicin was in stock again and he used it, despite the poor results. I have no explanation for this behavior, other than that the antibiotic is old, out of demand and probably extremlly cheap. Needless to say, the results from the third injection were once again poor and I relapsed. Also, unlike the first two injections - the third was painful and today, a week later, I still have pain from it.
So, statistically - I am one of those who were not helped by the injections, I only got worse from them. Does this mean that they don't work? Doe's it mean that I have non-bacterial prostatitis? That it is treatment resistent and that I should stop pursuing the antibiotic way?
No. It means that the protocol was performed poorly. The injections have great potential but needs to have some adjustment. First of all, 10 days between is too much. Secondly, my case shows the importance of choosing correct antibiotics even at these concentrations. Thirdly, I couldn't help noticing the needle is awfully thick. This probably allows for a quick injection, but could cause damage. The Chinese claim to have longer and much thinner needles for this reason, and it might be true as their injections lasts for 1-2 minutes while those are done in ~15 seconds including both seminal vesicles.
The temporary relief but fast relapsing we hear about could maybe be attributed to failure of the doctor rather than the method itself, or patients ejaculating the treatment out too close to the injection. Relapsing in months or years could depend on sexual contact, and not treatment failure.
I do believe this method works, but that sometimes questionable results are a result from poor performance of the treatment. My recommendation to chronic sufferers thinking about undergoing the procedure, is to go on with it, but not in Italy. I hope my experience and thoughts provide helpful to someone out there, as there is little information on the internet on this from a patients perspective
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