Dr. Elterman on the future of stents for benign prostatic hyperplasia

In this video, Dean S. Elterman, MD, MSc, FRCSC, provides insight into the future of stents for BPH, which was discussed in the recent publication, “A scoping review of office-based prostatic stents: past, present, and future of true minimally invasive treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia,” for which he served as the senior author. Elterman is a urologist at University Urology Associates and a faculty member in the University of Toronto's division of urology in Ontario, Canada.

Video Transcript:

I think we're trying to deal with a real problem. The problem is that we have a an increasingly aging population globally of men who are going to be encountering BPH, and we are having a decline in the number of urologists who are able to treat all of the BPHs out there. You couple that with the need and the interest to have less invasive options that preserve sexual function. So, I think BPH stents are really going to bridge the gap between medical therapy, that is not for everybody–and there are some increasing concerns around the long-term uses of alpha blockers and 5-ARIs–and the invasive transurethral surgeries, which many men don't want to have because of the potential of [adverse] effects [and] complications. Ultimately we just don't have enough urologists to be doing TURPs and HoLEPs and lasers on everybody.

So, office-based stents are going to, I hope, fill in some of the gaps and provide greater symptom improvement to more men in an easier way of doing it in an office setting. With these investigations of these new stents coming out, we'll be able to demonstrate their application, how to use them, in which patients and which prostates, and it will provide greater symptom relief for many more men because it's just going to be easier to place in an office.

I think for those who are interested in the field, just keep your eyes open. There's a lot of exciting publications and research coming out with these new stents: Zenflow Spring System, the Rivermark FloStent, the ProVerum ProVee, the Butterfly, Optilume, the Prodeon Expander. There's a whole bunch of new stents, [and] maybe there'll be more coming out. It's a really exciting time for people who are interested in BPH/LUTS. We really want to try to offer less invasive options, so more to come.

This transcription has been edited for clarity.