These are among the most common, and potentially most serious, complications of radical prostatectomy. Blood clots that form in the legs’ deep veins (this is called deep venous thrombosis) can be, at best, painful. At worst they can be fatal. The leg veins are, as one doctor describes it, “a straight shot to the lungs”; [...]

Like all surgery involving anesthesia, radical prostatectomy carries the risk of death, but this is extremely rare. In one hospital’s study of 1,000 patients, there were two deaths—one man died three weeks after surgery, from a blood clot in his lung (for important tips on how to recognize symptoms of this, see below). The other [...]

After incontinence, impotence ranks right up there on the “most feared complications” list. But let’s make sure we’re all talking about the same thing: First of all, what is potency? The medical definition is simple—”an erection sufficient for vaginal penetration and orgasm.” Having said that, it’s worth repeating that men who are impotent after radical [...]

In extremely rare cases, when incontinence does not get better over time, your doctor may do cystometry to determine the state of the bladder. If you have urgency incontinence, anticholinergic drugs can dampen the involuntary bladder contractions. If you have stress incontinence, drugs that cause smooth muscle contractions, including decongestants or antidepressants (imiprimine, for instance, [...]

Doctors practising today have been trained in the subject of allergy on the basis of what is scientifically proven – that a range of specific symptoms results from an over-reaction of the immune system, and that objective evidence can be provided by skin and blood tests proving the involvement of the immune system. When doctors [...]

Having a baby is nothing like buying a TV set or a car and a couple’s urge to produce a baby should ideally be controlled until the man and woman know they are secure together; that they can cope with the bad times as well as the good; that they want a baby for the [...]

This is much less concerned with the cause or causes but more with the actual problem itself and what can be done to overcome it. To a psychosexual therapist a sexual problem is simply a symptom of some other underlying difficulty or problem, whilst to the sex therapist it is the main focus of attention. [...]

This is a highly personalised and enjoyable behaviour that takes place between a man and a woman often before penetration occurs. It is an extension of the love-making that ideally goes on throughout their everyday lives, as discussed later. A lot of nonsense has been written about foreplay. The received wisdom perpetuated from sex manual [...]

The scrotum is a bag of skin. The position of the testes in the scrotum is controlled by the cremasteric muscles which contract to pull the testes up towards the body when cold and relax to lower the testes into the scrotum when hot. By adjustment in the height of the testes their temperature is [...]

Affairs are said to be increasingly common, though all the statistics about their prevalence are misleading because affairs tend to be under-reported in surveys. The impression of clinicians working in this field, however, is that women are as likely, or nearly as likely, as men to be, or to have been, in such relationships and [...]