“If we synergize our efforts and our energy, as the level of the sea rises, all ships on the sea will rise with it,” says Wayne Kuang, MD.
In this video, Wayne Kuang, MD, discusses the importance of collaborating with other health care professionals when treating benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Kuang is a urologist and CEO of the MD for Men Team in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Transcription:
How should urologists collaborate with other health care professionals to manage patients with BPH with comorbid conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or neurogenic bladder disorders?
The question about, how do we come together as a health care system as providers, and how do we collaborate to really take men’s health to the next level, because it is very complex. One of the first things we did for the Man vs Prostate campaign was we actually surveyed all the urologists globally on LinkedIn to see, how do we want to think about Man vs Prostate and the male lower urinary tract symptoms when we put the bladder at the very center of the discussion. What was really important is that we needed collaboration with neurologists, endocrinologists, primary care doctors, pharma, the medical device industry, to all come together and really recognize that there’s so many other contributing factors; for example, aging. As men get older, bladder muscles are also going to get older and get weaker. We need to factor that in. We need to factor in diabetes. How does the effect on diabetic cystopathy, pathologies on the bladder due to diabetes, influence lower urinary tract symptoms or neurologic dysfunctions like multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease, or the fact that we now, currently in America, have an epidemic of obesity. What’s the impact when you have all that adipose tissue in the abdomen sitting on the bladder? So now the bladder has to work even harder trying to hold up all this abdominal fat. So as you can see, there are multiple etiologies that contribute to symptoms for voiding. Yes, BPH/BPO is a contributor, but we need to recognize all these other factors and really collaborate with each other. The collaboration starts with gratitude and a celebration. Thank you all the academics, community docs, primary care, the specialists, as well as even beyond that, our staff who are sitting with our patients as we’re doing urodynamics or getting them ready for cystoscopy or the front desk, check in/check out, pharmaceuticals, medical device industry. We’re all part of this equation. So thank you for coming together. If we synergize our efforts and our energy, as the level of the sea rises, all ships on the sea will rise with it…