Aquablation for BPH

Don't let your prostate get in the way of your life

If you’re getting up to urinate throughout the night, you could have benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), an enlarged prostate that puts pressure on your urethra and causes the bladder to overwork. But you don’t have to suffer. At UVA Health, we offer aquablation, an advanced technology that offers lasting relief.

Why Get BPH Treated?

Many men experience frequent urination, sleeplessness, and have trouble peeing due to BPH. But most don’t seek treatment. The problem? As you age, BPH gets worse. It can lead to bladder damage. You can find yourself needing to use a catheter to empty your bladder.

Aquablation provides a safe, effective, and permanent solution. It can restore your urinary continence and sexual health and preserve your confidence and overall health for years to come.

Aquablation at UVA Health

At UVA Health, we’re the first to offer the latest version of this technology in Virginia. Here, you’ll experience care from specialists who helped further the original research that developed this technology.

Everyone’s prostate is different. At UVA Health, we’ll optimize your experience with personalized care and high-tech tools. We’ll tailor your treatment to work for the specific size and shape of your prostate.

How Aquablation Makes a Real Impact

David's enlarged prostate kept him from sleeping. Aquablation helped him get the rest he needed, so that he could fully enjoy life.

Watch David's Story Now

Diagnosis Through Data Analysis

If you’re having any of the symptoms of BPH, you should find out why. You want to make sure you don’t have prostate cancer. And the sooner you get diagnosed, the more options we have for treatment.

To get an accurate diagnosis of your condition, we need to know:

The pattern, strength, frequency of your urination
How much your bladder can hold and how effectively it empties
The size and shape of your prostate
How much urethra is blocked and the bladder is damaged

Step 1: Measuring Your Flow

In the past, urologists had to rely on patients to keep logs of their urination. You would have to come into the office with a full bladder for analysis. These methods often had mixed results.

Now we send you home with a flow device. This is a hand-held device that empties into your toilet. It uploads data about your urine stream to our secure server in real time. With this information, we can identify the best next steps for you with a high level of precision.

Step 2: Mapping Your Prostate

The next step in understanding your condition requires a visual snapshot of your prostate and bladder.

If you have a recent MRI, we can use that. Otherwise, a 2-minute ultrasound can provide what we need.

We also do a cystoscopy. With a small, flexible scope, we can see how much your enlarged prostate has damaged your bladder and how much blockage is present.

With all of this data in hand, we work with you to personalize your treatment plan.

What Is Aquablation?

This technique uses a high-pressure water jet to remove prostate tissue getting in the way of your urine flow. With advanced robotics, AI, and real-time imaging, we can customize the procedure to ensure we’re removing the correct parts of the prostate and saving the rest.

Safe & Effective

This is an outpatient, same-day procedure that takes about an hour. It’s a noninvasive procedure. There’s no cutting, sutures, or lasers. You’ll have a shorter recovery time and less risk than you would with other types of surgeries.

Healing & Recovery After Aquablation

You’ll have a catheter for 2-4 days.

A catheter is a hollow tube that empties your bladder through your urethra. It gives your body a chance to heal from the procedure. Most men find this more of an inconvenience than painful.

You can come into the clinic to take it out, or we can show you how to take it out yourself. Our support team will help you either way.

After the procedure, you won’t need heavy medications. But we do urge you to give yourself time to heal. If you strain yourself during recovery, you could experience bleeding.

Most men find they’re back to physical activities after 3-4 weeks.