Information You Can Use About Prostatitis
An inflammation or infection in a male’s prostate is called prostatitis. As many as half of all men will experience prostatitis in their lifetime. It is important to know that should you get prostatitis it does not increase your risk for any other prostate condition or disease such as prostate cancer.
Prostatitis has various causes such as a bacterial infection or some type of infecting organism. If the cause is nonbacterial in nature than antibiotics will be ineffective but if it is caused by a bacterial infection your doctor will treat it with an antibiotic.
There are different types of prostatitis including acute bacterial prostatitis, asymptomatic inflammatory prostatitis, chronic bacterial prostatitis, and also chronic prostatitis or also known as chronic pelvic pain syndrome. It is uncommon to get the acute or chronic bacterial forms of prostatitis. The most common type of prostatitis is the chronic prostatitis.
Men who have prostatitis usually have the following symptoms:
The need to urinate frequently
Painful or burning upon urination (dysuria)
Pain in the genital area or pain in the lower back
There may also be other symptoms that your doctor can identify for you.
Your doctor will run several tests in order to arrive at a diagnosis. One test that he will do is to use a gloved and lubricated finger to conduct a digital rectal examination (DRE). Your doctor will also order a urinalysis. The correct diagnosis is vital to getting the proper treatment for your prostate condition. It is important that even if you are not having symptoms that you complete the full course of treatment. It is possible to not have symptoms but still have a prostate disease because often the symptoms do not occur with prostate disease until it is advanced and has spread to other parts of the body like the spine (if you have prostate cancer).
Prostatitis is not a contagious condition so you cannot spread it through sexual contact and your partner cannot infect you if he has it.
Treatment depends on what type of prostatitis the man has.
Acute bacterial prostatitis presents with body aches, burning or painful urination, chills and fever, pain in the lower back or pain in the genital area. The man will also complain of having to urinate frequently especially at night. A urine test will show white blood cells and bacteria in the urine. Antibiotic is the treatment for this type of prostatitis.
If the man has chronic bacterial prostatitis (which is uncommon) and is usually associated with a defect in the prostate. First the defect is removed to prevent future infections and then antibiotics are used to treat the infection. It must be noted though that it is often the case that antibiotics are ineffective against this condition.
If a man has chronic prostatitis or also known as chronic pelvic pain syndrome he can have either the inflammatory or noninflammatory type. It can occur in males of any age and the symptoms can disappear only to return again. There are no antibiotics for this type of prostatitis but the doctor may suggest warm baths and a medicine “alpha-blocker” used to relax the muscle tissue in the prostate.
If a man has infection-fighting cells in his semen but does not complain of any pain or discomfort he is usually diagnosed with asymptomatic inflammatory prostatitis. A man undergoing fertility testing or testing for prostate cancer is typically diagnosed with this type of prostatitis.
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