Are Kidney Stones and Prostatitis Related? Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee Answer a Patient Question
Donna Lee:
The Armor Men’s Health Hour is brought to you by Urology Specialists. For questions during the week, call us at (512) 238-0762 or visit our website at armormenshealth.com. The Armor Men’s Health Hour is a show dedicated to providing information on a variety of medical topics, some of which may include sensitive subject material about penises. All cases discussed have been done with the permission of the people involved and their penises.
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Welcome to the Armor Men’s Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.
Dr. Mistry:
Hello and welcome to the Armor Men’s Health Hour. I’m Dr. Mistry, your host, here as always with my cohost, Donna Lee.
Donna Lee:
Hi. Why do you always start laughing right before you say that?
Dr. Mistry:
I don’t know. I want to set a mental thing just in case I ever have to replace you.
Donna Lee:
Oh, that’s so not nice.
Dr. Mistry:
Here with my cohost…
Donna Lee:
Donna Lee!
Dr. Mistry:
…Amber Johnson. Anyway, I’m Dr. Mistry. I’m your host today. This is the Armor Men’s Health Hour. I am a board certified urologist. The show here is brought to you by our urology practice, NAU Urology Specialists.
Donna Lee:
And what did NAU stand for?
Dr. Mistry:
It used to stand for North Austin Urology, but then we opened a Dripping Springs and South Austin office, which I thought was going to stay with this “Keep Austin weird” thing, but they didn’t like that.
Donna Lee:
They were keeping Austin North.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right, and we’re slowly and surely making our brand transition to Urology Specialists of Austin, so…
Donna Lee:
USA!
Dr. Mistry:
…we’re just so confused right now with our little brand. The Armor Men’s Health Hour isn’t going to change.
Donna Lee:
That’s right. It’s called growth and we have a lot of it. And we’re the second largest urology clinic in the entire city.
Dr. Mistry:
You know what being the second largest group in Austin means, don’t you?
Donna Lee:
It means we’re cuter.
Dr. Mistry:
It means that we just try a little bit harder….
Donna Lee:
…on that Saturday nights.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. This is a show in which we try to explore in depth men’s health issues, even if they pertain to both men and women that can affect you or a family member.
Donna Lee:
You know what? I had 2 patients I talked to this week and they said because of the extensive and expansive information that you share that was so much more than what they thought was urology, they made appointments!
Dr. Mistry:
Yes.
Donna Lee:
They were like, “Dr. Mistry was talking about my cholesterol might be the problem.”
Dr. Mistry:
Only 2?
Donna Lee:
Well, we’ve had a bunch but I specifically talked to 2 and I shouldn’t be answering the phones, but we’re a little short staffed.
Dr. Mistry:
I will tell you that it has been an absolute pleasure and honor to be able to provide this show. We love our listener engagement. I know it’s hard to hear this in the car and then go home with your questions and then get on the email and send us an email. But we are at armormenshealth.com. That’s A-R-M-O-R-menshealth.com. Donna, why don’t you tell people about our urology practice.
Donna Lee:
That’s right, our urology practice is second to none, and we are located at 970 Hester’s Crossing in Round Rock, Texas. We have a location in North Austin, South Austin, and Dripping Springs. You can call us during the week at (512) 238-0762, and I always get a little chuckle when somebody calls and I happen to answer the phone and they’re like, “Is this the Donna from the show?” And I’m like, “Yes it is.” So, there you go.
Dr. Mistry:
Now, what’s weird about that is that you are a professional comedienne. You should expect people to remember you.
Donna Lee:
No, usually they have to see you. Like I used to get recognized in comedy when I did a lot of comedy everywhere, but now it’s just my voice.
Dr. Mistry:
I’ve never been famous. And when people don’t know who I am, I’m a little offended.
Donna Lee:
At the gas station, you’re just mad?
Dr. Mistry:
Like, “You don’t know who I am? I’m on the radio.”
Donna Lee:
Oh my goodness gracious. Well…oh, and email us the questions at armormenshealth@gmail.com. It’s armormenshealth@gmail.com
Dr. Mistry:
Now we try to make this kind of a generic show because we want people to listen on our podcast and we don’t want to make it dated, but we are living in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Donna Lee:
And that’s getting old, by the way.
Dr. Mistry:
It sure is. You know, it’s very interesting Donna Lee, you know, as a physician it’s hard to balance when you’re trying to see patients in the office between what you consider a societal recommendation and imperative to stay at home and socially distance versus the other one, which is that people are sick and need to be seen by their doctor. This week has been an interesting show of that. We’ve had patients that didn’t want to come in for conditions in which they clearly needed hands laid on them to examine their problem. And I will tell you that at least with our practice, if you are listening to this show on the radio and you have an urgent urologic issue, please call, you know, even if we just do our initial visit over the telephone, I can at least determine whether or not you need to be seen in the office. As my doctor friends mentioned on our Facebook combined pages, the usual health concerns that people have are certainly still happening. I mean we still have problems with kidney stones, testis masses, abnormal lab tests, perhaps coming out for your erectile dysfunction or Peyronie’s disease could probably wait a week or two, but we can at least discuss a lot of that on the telephone. We have the time and the capacity and certainly the willingness to help take care of you.
Donna Lee:
Right. And I can tell the difference between last week and this week. People are like, “Oh no, I’m not going anywhere” last week, scared, I’m staying at home. This week, they were like, “Can I please come see you? I need to get out of this house!”
Dr. Mistry:
Well, we’re making a lot of changes just like you would make at any thoughtful medical practice. We’re limiting the foot traffic through the waiting room. We are thoroughly cleaning, but you know, we’ve always been a clean, hygienic place as it is. So luckily…
Donna Lee:
Kind of have to be, huh?
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. We learned about hand washing a long time ago. Especially where we work and how we work and what we touch around here.
Donna Lee:
Yeah, and we touch a lot of things.
Dr. Mistry:
So this week, a lot of the very interesting topics that I was able to contend with were I think a little more complicated. I think that since men are kind of not coming in, when I do get a hold of them, they want to talk about everything. We’re talking about BPH and enlarged prostate quite a bit this week. Especially if all you’re doing is sitting at home and drinking fluid and then realizing you’re having to get up, you know, to go pee every hour, maybe a little bit of self-introspection is happening. Just a reminder, to those of you that are newer listeners or never heard us talk about our approach to enlarge prostate, we take a very comprehensive approach that tries to really focus on which symptom is bothering you the most. I think a lot of men have just been told they had a large prostate. Today I had a 41 year old patient that mentioned to us that they have an enlarged prostate and they’ve had it for the last 5 or 7 years, and it’s just really hard for me to believe that someone in their early thirties is going to have really urinary symptoms from an enlarged prostate. So we were able to delve into it a lot more and really uncover a lot of issues including a trauma history that probably is having a lot more of an impact. And if you do really have an enlarged prostate with slow flow, delayed urinary stream, recurrent UTI’s, difficulty emptying your bladder, we have a lot of minimally invasive techniques that we can try to offer you. Some of those include things like Urolift or Rezume. We offer all the traditional therapies and we’re going to go into each one of those therapies one at a time, really in depth. And if you are interested in listening on the podcast, you will hear a number of in depth explanations with men’s health experts and myself talking about these different treatments for an enlarged prostate.
Donna Lee:
You know, we had a really good question that came through the phones today. A patient called and said he had, he presented with hematuria, blood in his urine. He was told by another urologist, he had Prostatitis. Then he said the urologist missed a 5 milliliter kidney stone. Then he said the urologist said they are not connected–Prostatitis and kidney stones–and the patient was like, “I don’t believe that at all, and I want a second opinion.”
Dr. Mistry:
Okay.
Donna Lee:
So what are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Mistry:
Well, it sounds like to me the Prostatitis was the wrong diagnosis. Because what happens with the kidney stone frequently is as it’s makes its journey from the kidney down into the bladder, it can get hung up right at the end of the tube right before it goes into the bladder. And that can frequently cause symptoms of urinary urgency and frequency. So if a patient comes into the office and has blood in their urine that they can see along with frequency and urgency, I think, you know, a primary care doctor–so I’m not going to let the urologist go on this one–a primary care doctor might say that “This person has a urinary tract infection,” and say, “Well, it’s probably just a urinary tract infection.” And in men we usually can attribute it to a Prostatits or a prostate infection. But I will tell you that I don’t usually associate blood in the urine that you can see immediately with Prostatitis in a man. And because I know that a stone at the very end of the ureter can mimic a urinary tract infection, I will almost always get a CT scan. And I suspect that this urologist also got a CT scan, which is how the 5 millimeter stone was diagnosed. And so when they say that the stone and the Prostatits aren’t connected, I think that is a true statement on the urologist’s point. But if you take it a step backwards, not forwards, backwards, the urinary complaints of urinary urgency and frequency and the stone are absolutely connected to one another. So I think that leaving that office with the diagnosis of Prostatitis and then connecting the stone and the Prostatitis are probably where the misallocation of you know cause and symptom are. But certainly a stone as it’s traveling, especially as it ends right in the middle of his journey, right at the end of the tube will cause blood in the urine, urinary urgency frequency and I guess could be commonly mistaken with the Prostatitis diagnosis.
Donna Lee:
Hmm. Interesting.
Dr. Mistry:
Well that’s a great question.
Donna Lee:
It was, by accident.
Dr. Mistry:
Unfortunately that guy already passed the stone, there’s nothing for me to do now.
Donna Lee:
You can just meet him.
Dr. Mistry:
And he got his second opinion for free.
Donna Lee:
It’s true.
Dr. Mistry:
It’s probably the best part of this show. It’s probably going to be the longest second opinion you get for free in your life.
Donna Lee:
I better call him because then he doesn’t have to come in.
Dr. Mistry:
No, don’t do that.
Donna Lee:
Just kidding.
Dr. Mistry:
We can still see him for erectile dysfunction and low testosterone and all the other things. But most importantly, what we can do is put him on one of the most extensive nutritional programs to prevent the recurrence of kidney stones in the city.
Donna Lee:
What a lovely segue!
Dr. Mistry:
We have a registered dietitian on staff…
Donna Lee:
We do.
Dr. Mistry:
…an amazing program with laboratory testing and nutritional interventions, and just really a program that I am super proud of.
Donna Lee:
And you’re super excited about it all the time.
Dr. Mistry:
Super excited.
Donna Lee:
Robert Mendiola is our registered dietician, and he’s onsite, and he’s ready to go.
Dr. Mistry:
That’s right. Well, why don’t you tell people how to get ahold of us?
Donna Lee:
You can call us at (512) 238-0762 during the week. You can ask for me as well. You can also email us your wonderful questions at armormenshealth@gmail.com. That’s armormenshealth@gmail.com. And listen to our podcasts, wherever you listen to podcasts, it’s free! We’ll be right back.
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Dr. Mistry wants to hear from you. Email questions to armormenshealth@gmail.com. We’ll be right back with the Armor Men’s Health Hour.