Lifestyle modification for chronic prostatitis
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Chen, Shin-Hong
Abstract
Background: The prostate is a gland unique to men, the part surrounding the urethra at the opening of the urinary bladder. The prostate functions physiologically as a sphincter, an exocrine, and an endocrine. According to clinical statistics, males over 50 years old have a chance around 50% to have enlarged prostates, but in urology outpatients departments, prostatitis is an illness more usually seen in males between 30 and 50. Suffering from prostatitis could yield no symptoms at all, but it could also cause persistent or recurrent discomfort of the urinary system. Among these is the chronic non-bacterial prostatitis. The etiologies of chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS) are not fully understood, and the symptoms tend to relapse, resulting in serious impact on quality of life of the patients. In addition, the treatment for chronic prostatitis (CP) is controversial in the medical field, making it one of the most troublesome problems an urologist can find in clinical practice.
Taiwan Adventist Hospital is one of over 700 healthcare institutions operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in a worldwide mission system. We have been promoting the NEWSTART project ever since 1997. The project includes emphasis on nutrition, exercise, water, sunshine, temperance, air, rest, and trust. We hope to improve increasingly serious health problems through everyday life, decreasing the chances for cancer, cerebrovascular disease, heart disease, diabetes and many other modern chronic diseases, while also decreasing waste of medical resources. In this study we hope to find positive results in the involvement of the NEWSTART project in CPPS treatment, thus proving effective and complete treatment can be yielded through changes in eating and living habits.
Method: We divide patients into an experimental group and a control group. Patients can choose between receiving medical treatment, rehabilitation and take no part in the NEWSTART program (control group), or NEWSTART intervention only without medical treatment (experimental group). All the patients in the control group are given antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs/muscle relaxants, and other rehabilitative treatment, including infrared, magnetic therapy etc., but for patients in the experimental group, we only suggest that they accept NEWSTART treatment. We use questionnaires including NIH-CPSI (National Institute of Health –Chronic Prostatitis Symptoms Index)、IPSS (International Prostate Symptom Score)、IIEF-5 (International Index of Erectile Function-5) etc. After 3-month intervention treatment, we compare the subjective symptoms change of both groups. Using SPSS v.19, the data analysis was carried out with paired sample t test as statistic method.
Result: All of our statistics are assessed with Cronbach ''s Alpha before analysis with an aim to measure the consistency and stability of our study questionnaire. We found overall reliability to be 0.823, which shows that the credibility of our studies is within acceptable range. From the data we have seen from the first three months, patients of study group (n=25) and control group (n=20) show obvious improvements not only in the total scores of CPSI and IPSS, but also in the domains of CPSI including pain, urination and quality of life. Furthermore, statistical differences before and after treatment also show significant differences (P value < 0.05). Although patients in the experimental group have no improvements in IIEF-5 after three months follow-up, this might result from the factors which are extensive and complicated in etiologies of sexual erectile dysfunction (ED). It could be hard to achieve significant improvement of ED just through the treatment of chronic prostatitis; and this is also a focal point for us when observing if sexual erectile dysfunction can be treated through lifestyle changes in future long-term follow-up studies.
Conclusion: The preliminary significance of this study lies in that through NEWSTART intervention, patients with CPPS can receive the same amount of improvement achievable through medical treatment without the use of drugs. However, it need more long-term follow-up to reach further conclusions.
Subjects
Chronic prostatitis (CP)
Chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS)
NEWSTART lifestyle program
National Institute of Health-Chronic Prostatitis Symptoms Index (NIH-CPSI)
International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS)
International Index of Erectile Function-5 (IIEF
SDGs
Type
thesis
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