Longer life expectancy and the progress made in anaesthesiology have led to an increase over the last few years in the request for treatment of symptomatic benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) in elderly patients. A retrospective analysis on 270 patients aged 75 years who underwent surgery on the cervico-prostatic district between 1989 and 1997 showed a rate of complications (10% overall) comparable with that in patients of any age undergoing the same operation. This reinforces the conviction that both open surgery and endoscopic procedures for treating symptomatic BPH are safe and reliable even in the elderly.
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