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Urinary Incontinence
Options for Management
Jaspreet S. Sandhu, MD Runtime: 50 minutes |
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Once your treatment is complete, your doctor is likely to recommend that you see him or her regularly for checkups. During these exams your doctor will probably perform a PSA blood test and digital rectal exam to help ensure that your cancer has not returned.
Management of Complications
Advances in treatment approaches, such as nerve-sparing surgical techniques and 3-D conformal radiotherapy, have made some of the complications of prostate cancer treatments less common and more manageable. Still, the disease and its treatments sometimes result in short-term and long-term complications.
In choosing a treatment approach, you are likely to have discussed complications such as incontinence and impotence with your doctor, but you should contact him or her if you are experiencing any unexpected symptoms or if these problems are causing you distress.
Role of Rehabilitation Services
Following medical treatment or abdominal surgery for prostate cancer, a patient may notice changes in his strength, flexibility, balance, and endurance. Patients with prostate cancer can improve their function and quality of life through rehabilitation therapy. At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, physical therapists work closely with the medical team to design individualized exercise programs to increase patients' strength, endurance, and balance after treatments. They offer patients valuable techniques to increase mobility without increasing pain and discomfort after surgery. See Rehabilitation for further information about our services, including appointment information.
Emotional & Sexual Health
Memorial Sloan-Kettering's comprehensive care of men with prostate cancer includes physicians, nurses, psychologists, and social workers with expertise in treating the emotional and psychological distress, as well as sexual health problems, that can arise from prostate cancer and the effects of treatment for the disease. Sexual function can be affected by prostate cancer and its treatment. We have a team of experts who specialize in male sexual health problems including erectile dysfunction (impotence). This includes penile rehabilitation, which is a comprehensive program to optimize the maintenance of erectile function after the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.
