Help Below the Belt With Spinal Cord Injuries: Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee Answer a Listener’s Question on Urologic Care for Quadriplegics
Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Armour men’s health hour with dr. Mystery and Donna Lee. Hello,
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the armor men’s health hour. I’m dr. Mystery, your host here with my effervescent and completely competent at computers cohost.
Speaker 1:
I did not get hired to be a radio producer, but now I am with the assistance of our amazing Daniel at KLBJ
Speaker 2:
Right. This is the hour men’s held hour. I’m dr. Mystery, your host, I’m a board certified urologist. This is a men’s health show. This is brought to you by the urology practice that I began in 2007, called NAU urology specialists. We are four board certified urologist and for wonderful mid-levels that have been with me for a number of years. These are physician assistants and nurse practitioners specifically trained in urology
Speaker 1:
Changed. Can we change the mid levels to like upper levels, upper levels? Awesome.
Speaker 2:
That’s all we are now. All we’re doing is we’re going to just talk about awesome names, the things we really appreciate. All of you listeners out there. We really appreciate the team and the staff here at KLBJ news, radio Kelly and Daniel. Who’ve helped us put this show on the air for over a year. Now, you mean put up with us for a year. I just can’t believe that they really listened to the show or else I’m not sure we’d pass muster. I don’t think so. Every week,
Speaker 1:
I think, you know, we’ve been getting a lot less complaints. We used to get some people complaining in the beginning, but I think the audience is used to it now.
Speaker 2:
Probably just people just shaking their head. Oh boy. Uh, but we really appreciate those of you that listened to us on the radio. And of course, if you ever want to catch a previous episode or become a fan of ours through the podcasting world, you can catch us wherever you catch your podcasts. And don’t be scared of podcasting. If you have never podcasts that it’s just a way of doing video on demand, but for your ears,
Speaker 1:
Like watching the dirty movie for the first.
Speaker 2:
No, no, you’re not allowed. No, no. I can see you smiling stop. No, no,
Speaker 1:
It’s not so scary. It is just like that.
Speaker 2:
Well, we’re not trying to scare you. And we have some great episodes including disaster seen in the emergency room that you’d love to hear.
Speaker 1:
Everybody’s talking about that one. It’s a good episode, terrible things to do to your penis. And you end up in the ER, what could go better than that?
Speaker 2:
Many of you out there may not know what a urologist does. We do treat both men and women. Men’s issues can range from kidney stones, prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and enlarged prostate. We see a variety of hormonal issues. And what we try to do here is take a whole body approach. That’s why we have a nutritionist on staff. That’s why we have a pelvic floor, physical therapist on staff. Ultimately, we want you to leave here feeling better than when you came in to us and not just necessarily with arm full of pills. We offer many nonsurgical and minimally invasive surgical approaches to a variety of urologic conditions, including prostate artery embolization, including Rezume and Urolift. And if you’re looking for a second opinion about your prostate cancer or any urologic condition, this is the kind of thing that makes our heart leap
Speaker 1:
And don’t get him started on high intensity focused ultrasound.
Speaker 2:
That’s right when it comes to minimally invasive and cutting edge treatments for prostate cancer, if you haven’t been told about high intensity focused ultrasound, then please give us a call. It’s something that we talk about day in and day out with patients from all over the state. And we’d love to talk to you about it. If you’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer, that’s localized to the prostate.
Speaker 1:
This is super off topic, but I got an email from our sleep study coordinating group today, sending me a little update. And in their email, they have in a highlight: “Evidence that sleep apnea directly affects patients likely to contract COVID-19 has surfaced. Patients with untreated sleep apnea are three times more likely to contract covert than someone who is getting quality sleep patients with diabetes and untreated sleep apnea are three times more likely to die from COVID-19. We strive to continue to testing our patients through the pandemic and have systems in place to keep everyone safe.” That is also in our office, but I thought there was so compelling. I had no idea.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I mean, it’s a great twofold point about our practice and about what kind of care we’d like to provide. First of all, sleep apnea is a condition that affects millions of men and women. It can predispose one to obesity, heart disease, as well as low testosterone, which is why we see a lot of it because so many of our patients have low testosterone. And not being able to both rest because you’re not oxygenating well during sleep, as well as the other comorbidities that are caused by sleep apnea certainly would put you at increased risk for COVID and a variety of other conditions. But it also kind of speaks to the full range of medicine that we want to provide our patients. To learn more about what we do, we would love for you to, to visit us as a patient, but also feel free to ask us questions. Donna Lee, how do people send us?
Speaker 1:
You can send us questions to our email address. It’s armor men’s health@gmail.com or you can send an inquiry or a question to Armour men’s health.com. That’s our website. And you can also call us during the week and ask for me if you’d like (512) 238-0762. We are urology specialists and this is the armor men’s health show. We have four locations round rock, North Austin, South Austin. And I always say super, super cute dripping Springs.
Speaker 2:
So Donna, why don’t you serve us up with one of those questions?
Speaker 1:
Kind of a broad question, but I know that you are just going to enjoy this one so much because we do help quite a few patients in this area. This just simply says, “I’m a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. Can you help me?”
Speaker 2:
That’s a great question. So the urologic impacts of spinal cord injury are numerous. And in fact, uh, when it comes to a variety of different kinds of spinal cord injury, major morbidity from urologic causes was all was, was kind of the standard. Well, when somebody has a spinal cord injury, oftentimes their bladders will not empty. And those patients were subject to urinary tract infections, recurrent kidney stones and kidney infections, and this is actually a condition that we also see in children born with a type of spinal cord injury called spina bifida. They also often cannot empty their bladder develop recurrent infections. It was some major changes in the way that patients with spinal cord injury and spina bifida were treated and how important urology was in terms of their frontline management that led to so many lives being saved and so much morbidity being avoided.
Speaker 2:
We absolutely do treat, uh, the neurogenic bladder issues associated with spinal cord injury. And that is more of a lifesaving type approach. We take care of the kidney stones and the bladder stones that can occur with the recurrent urinary tract infections, the need for intermittent bladder catheterization. That’s only part of it. Men in a wheelchair are men first. They have needs that are related to, uh, erections and sexual satisfaction and gratification. They also have needs in terms of, uh, sexually satisfying their partner. There are needs specifically related to fertility that are unique amongst that population. Oftentimes men with spinal cord injury are incapable of ejaculating, and may feel like fathering children is perhaps not going to be possible for them. Fortunately, education about spinal cord injury has gotten much better. There is a wonderfully put together project called the Miami Project that talks about fertility and erectile function in spinal cord injury patients. Now this could be traumatic spinal cord injury, or it could be spinal cord injury that you’ve suffered because of a surgical incident or one that has to do with a preexisting back condition. There’s also certain types of neurologic injuries such as a result from diabetes that can lead to very similar kinds of problems. We have, uh, the only machine and technology in Texas outside of Houston that can be used for, uh, extracting sperm in spinal cord injury patients without making an incision is called electroejaculation. We also have, um, all the tech testing equipment here to test your bladder and make sure that that stays, um, uh, nice and healthy. And then when it comes to treatment of erectile dysfunction, we have a variety of noninvasive and minimally invasive ways of getting you a wonderful erection. We can find ways for you to ejaculate and to maintain an erection or get an erection on demand that is going to be very comfortable for you. And these are absolutely the kinds of things that we would love to help take care of. So not just unidimensional. It’s not just about your bladder, uh, when you’re a spinal cord injury patient, it’s really those other, other things that we’d like to make sure we maximize when it comes to fertility, sexual functioning and overall health of your kidneys as well.
Speaker 1:
And we have a lovely partner in the lone star paralysis group.
:
That’s right.
:
Those are our friends that they are. And if you listen to our podcast, we’d love for you to hear from Doug English. One of our favorite people, um, this year, the lone star paralysis foundation, uh, gala got canceled. Uh, but hopefully it will be on next year and we’ll be able to raise money for that, uh, amazing organization that provides, uh, rehabilitative equipment and really a lot of hope to spinal cord injury patients, that they hope that they can regain function and even walk one day.
Speaker 1:
Remember the gala last year, where they always have the patient that can’t walk and they go through all that rehab for the year or more. And then at the gala gala, the person who’s walking across the stage, and there’s not a dry eye.
Speaker 2:
That’s right. He knows Doug English knows how to, he knows how to get a tear out of here. Uh, and, uh, uh, to our partners there at the lone star paralysis foundation. We, uh, we can’t wait to see you guys again. And, um, thank you so much for the question. Uh, we would love to take care of you or any listener out there, or any listeners, a family member that has spinal cord injury and would like a second opinion on their bladder or your logic health. It’s absolutely the kind of thing that we would, uh, we would absolutely love to help you take care of Donna. How do people get ahold of us
Speaker 1:
Call us during the week. If I went to two, three eight zero seven six two, where you can email us at Armour men’s health@gmail.com, Harmer men’s health@gmail.com, you can send an inquiry or a question to our website, which is armor men’s health.com. We have so many patients that are coming through the whole do radio show. So that’s really been kind of nice.
Speaker 2:
And we really thank you all for being listeners and a wonderful person,
Speaker 3:
40 in this road. Thank you all. We’ll be back. Dr. Mystery wants to hear from you email questions to Armour men’s health@gmail.com. We’ll be right back with the armor men’s health hour.