Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate both knowledge of community about prostate and prostatic diseases, and approach on therapeutic modalities.

Study group consists of 422 men (31-81) ages. The mean age was 55. After general examination, I-PSS was obtained. Moreover, all cases were filled a questionnaire to determine patient’s point of view to prostate, prostatic diseases, and therapeutic modalities.

14% of the patients answered insufficiently and 1.8% of them gave wrong answer to the question of “what is prostate?”. 65.7% of men did not know what the prostate is, only 18.5% of men answered correctly. Men preferred drug (2.2%) open surgery (16.6%) and TUR-P (2.2) while 0.4% of them watchful waiting as a treatment modality. 78% of the men have no any information about treatment of prostatic diseases. If men had BPH, they would have preferred medical, surgical treatment and watchful waiting consequently (69.4%, 26.6%, 2.2%). 94.8% of men left the therapeutic decision to their physician. The men who did not want to be treated surgically were afraid of surgery, because of their ages (9.5%), fear of dead (%72), probability of impotence (6%), the idea of beneficial effect (8.5%) and probability of incontinence (1.5%).

Most of Turkish men still had no information about prostate, prostatic diseases and therapeutic approaches. People should be informed that prostatic diseases are not a natural end point of aging or are not the result of destiny. In this present study, we concluded that the most important responsibility is due to urologists to increase the knowledge of people and more educated patients.