The following terms as used herein have the meaning given below:
The "mucosa" is a coating on the epithelial tissue of the prostate and the urinary bladder.
"Necrosis" means the death of cells in tissue.
"Superficial layers" means the outer layers of tissue, e.g., a depth of about 5-6 mm.
"Benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH)" is non-cancerous overgrowth of the prostate causing obstruction to urine outflow from the urinary bladder.
The standard treatment of BPH is transurethral resection of the prostate. Such procedures visualize the urinary bladder neck and the bulge of the hypertrophied prostate and remove part of the prostate by cutting and coagulative electrosurgery applied through a resectoscope. This treatment has significant disadvantages including exposure to electrosurgical burn, infusion of liquid distention media into the patient's vascular system that could cause congestive heart failure and serious electrolyte disturbances, hemorrhage from the prostate, and hospitalization.
Because of these disadvantages, improved technology for treatment of BPH has been sought. Alternative approaches have involved dilation of the urinary bladder neck, cryocoagulation of the prostate, and drug therapies to shrink the prostate or improve urinary bladder function. None of these methods has effectively replaced the transurethral prostatectomy with a urologic resectoscope. In contrast, the apparatus and method of the present invention effectively cauterizes and destroys the surface mucosa and superficial layers of the prostate gland at the urinary bladder neck, thus, reducing some and eliminating other disadvantages of resectoscopic removal of the prostate.