Hi Please can you help, my Dad who is in his 80s has prostate cancer , he has an enlarged prostate , he had a catheter fitted about 6 weeks ago and a course of tablets to try and reduce the size. This has not worked. The early hours of today (hot off the press) his catheter was not draining, the nurse has been out this afternoon and says it was a possible blockage, he was helped, this was cleared but about about an hour ago again it was not draining again. The nurse is coming out and my dad is very distressed. Please advise, the nurse will not clal back as it is out of hours. Dianne. Grateful for any help/advice. Dad lives over 100 miles away.
Hi and welcome to Chat Doctor. Dear madam you should ensure that your dad has some competent staff by himself who can manage catheter reinsertion. It is usually not successful to treat cancer by medicines. Hypertrophy can be treated, but cancer will cause urine flow obstruction sooner or later. Only surgery can help in these cases. Catheter can help if there is no significant urine flow obstruction. And this obstruction must be managed as soon as possible. Sometimes catheter become useless and permanent solution is ureterotomy. Wish you good health.