Why is there Confusion about Prostatitis Symptoms?

Most cases diagnosed as prostatitis are actually problems of chronically tightened muscles of the pelvis – not problems of the prostate gland.

While Pelvic Pain Help treats both men and women with pelvic pain, a large majority of men are diagnosed with prostatitis. Unfortunately, most men with this diagnosis have mistakenly been told that their symptoms are caused by a problem with their prostate gland. In fact, the problem of genital, rectal, perineal pain, urinary symptoms, sitting discomfort, in most men has nothing to do with the prostate gland.

Approximately ninety-five percent (95%) of diagnosed cases are not prostatitis.

Approximately 95% of men with this diagnosis do not have symptoms caused by some pathology of their prostate gland. Most men do not understand the confusion among doctors about what is and isn’t prostatitis. In fact, many doctors do not understand this confusion either. Pelvic Pain Help hopes to clarify this confusion in this blog and on this website.

Most symptoms are not caused by an ‘itis’ of the prostate.

The overwhelming majority of cases do not appear to be caused by any known problem of the prostate gland. Nevertheless, most doctors currently have continued to use the term prostatitis and treat complaints of pelvic pain and urinary dysfunction as if they were caused by an infection or inflammation of the prostate. In careful studies, in past decades of treating the prostate in such men, the overwhelming majority derive no lasting relief from antibiotics or anti-inflammatory drugs.

Unfortunately, many doctors make a diagnosis of prostatitis symptoms and prescribe antibiotics without verifying that there is any infection present in the prostate.

Prostatitis, which means an infection or inflammation of the prostate gland, is often diagnosed without the doctor doing any definitive testing. As we have seen in a study of physicians in Wisconsin, a large majority of doctors view prostatitis symptoms as an inflammation or bacterial infection. More than that, almost all prescribe antibiotics as a treatment. Most urologists know from their own experience that antibiotic treatment without evidence of infection routinely fails to help symptoms. Yet, almost 100% of the cases of this kind receive antibiotics. We are always troubled to hear this experience in patients who come to see us, especially when the doctor made no attempt to establish the presence of infection.

Antibiotics are the best treatment for bacterial prostatitis but rarely help men with no prostate infection.

Pelvic Pain Help wants to emphasize that the antibiotic treatment of bacterial prostatitis has been an achievement of modern medicine. If you have bacterial prostatitis, antibiotics are a very good treatment—certainly the only treatment. Viewing all conditions of pelvic pain and dysfunction in men, however, is an error in judgment.

That being said, prostatitis as a tension/muscle disorder. The contribution of our website is to make it known in the large majority of cases of this diagnosis, it is the muscles of the pelvis, not the organs, that are the source of the problem. The protocol of 6-day clinic that we developed at Stanford, the Wise-Anderson Protocol, focuses on rehabilitating the muscles of the pelvis through Internal Trigger Point Release and Paradoxical Relaxation. The success of our protocol has been confirmed in a number of published scientific studies.

For more information, a video discussion of this is found here. Pelvic Pain Help hopes to be a valuable resource to you in discovering true prostatitis symptoms.