Maria Bisgaard Bengtsen who defended her PhD dissertation today has conducted four studies on benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Benign prostatic hyperplasia is a prevalent condition in the ageing male population. It is a progressive disease with the risk of requiring surgery and developing complications. Acute urinary retention is a severe complication to benign prostatic hyperplasia associated with high mortality among men of all ages. In the mid-1990s, medical therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia was introduced and rapidly replaced surgery as the first choice of treatment.

In this PhD thesis based on four registry-based Danish studies, we examined the long-term effects of this shift in treatment and prognoses of benign prostatic hyperplasia and acute urinary retention. We described trends in the incidence and mortality of acute urinary retention in the era of medical therapy for benign prostatic hyperplasia. Furthermore, we examined whether treatment with 5-alpha reductase inhibitors reduced the risk of surgery and acute urinary retention in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia for up to 15 years of follow-up. Finally, we examined whether a first-time diagnosis of acute urinary retention was a marker of cancer.

The studies were preceded by a validation study, that examined the validity of the diagnostic coding of benign prostatic hyperplasia and acute urinary retention recorded in the Danish National Patient Registry.

The summary is written by the PhD student.