Prostate Pain That Won't Go Away? You May Have

Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome

A common condition affecting 8.2% of men, chronic prostatitis is characterized by chronic pelvic pain and voiding symptoms in the absence of a clear bacterial infection.

Understanding Your Prostate Pain

What is Chronic Prostatitis?

Chronic prostatitis occurs when there is inflammation of prostate, inflammation of the pelvic nerves that supply the area around the pelvis and spastic pelvic floor muscles. This causes genital and bladder pain and dysfunction.

Symptoms of Chronic Prostatitis

Because of the inflammation happening within the pelvis, chronic prostatitis can result in multiple symptoms causing pain and dysfunction.

Your Prostate Pain is Real

What Causes Chronic Prostatitis?

Pelvic floor spasm and its associated pelvic nerve inflammation will cause Chronic Prostatitis. Certain activities can also cause or exacerbate CPPS, including prolonged sitting or biking. Often patients are seen by their urologist, where they will perform lab work and be treated for infection, but despite the treatment provided, the patient continues to have pelvic pain and bladder symptoms.

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    Inflammation in the genitourinary system

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    Pelvic Nerve Inflammation

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    Pelvic floor tension and muscle dysfunction

Chronic Prostatitis

Risk Factors

While there are multiple conditions that can cause Chronic Prostatitis, some lifestyle and medical factors can increase your risk of inflammation, resulting in experiencing the symptoms of chronic prostatitis.

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    Prolonged sitting or biking

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    Injury to the pelvis

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    Having had a urinary catheter or prostate biopsy

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    Men aged 50 or older

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    Sexually transmitted infections

Is Your Prostate Pain Chronic Prostatitis?

Diagnosing Chronic Prostatitis

Often patients are seen by their urologist, where they will perform lab work and be treated for infection, but despite the treatment provided, the patient continues to have pelvic pain and bladder symptoms because the inflammation itself has not been treated. This is where our full examination to determine the cause of your prostate inflammation is important.

Here’s what you can expect when you are a patient at Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine:

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    Step One – First, our providers will ask questions about your medical history and listen to your symptoms to get a full picture of what is going on with you.

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    Step Two – Next, an external exam of your hips, abdomen, and posterior sacrum.

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    Step Three – Next, your pelvic nerves are evaluated externally with a soft cotton tip.

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    Step Four – Next, with your consent, gel is placed on a gloved finger and an internal exam is performed to allow us to evaluate the nerves and muscles within the pelvis. There is no speculum required as we are evaluating the pelvic floor muscles and nerves not the organs.

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    Step Five – Sometimes patients will need Imaging to help us understand if there is an associated cause of the pelvic nerve and muscle pain and dysfunction found on exam.

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    Step Six – Oftentimes, treatment can be started the same day as there is no down time. Our patients have been suffering with pelvic pain symptoms for 6+ months. We like to get them on the road to feeling better as soon as we can as the longer the symptoms are present the harder it is for us to resolve them.

Treatment Options for Chronic Prostatitis

The subset of prostatitis that we would treat is non-bacterial prostatitis. Meaning, the workup was negative for infection.

Once a proper diagnosis has been given, we offer a proprietary office-based procedure to treat Chronic Prostatitis. This treatment consists of a series of pelvic nerve and muscle treatments to directly target the spastic pelvic floor muscles, inflammation around the pelvic nerves, and nerve pain. Depending on what is causing your Chronic Prostatitis, other modalities may be needed in addition to our treatment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Experiencing chronic prostatitis can severely affect your daily life and pelvic function, but our team of pelvic pain specialists will listen to you, validate your experiences and symptoms, and partner with you on your rehabilitation journey.

The simple answer is yes, but the prognosis depends on the underlying causes of your pain. With our multimodal treatment approach, patients can experience increased pelvic function and decreased pain and inflammation.

We recommend scheduling an appointment with one of our pelvic pain specialists if you have been experiencing the symptoms of chronic prostatitis with negative bacterial lab results, or medicines you have been prescribed for bacterial infections are not working.

You’ll meet with one of our pelvic pain specialists, who focus solely on pelvic pain. We’ll start with reviewing your full health history, including a discussion of your symptoms. This will help us to understand what you’ve been experiencing, so we can work to identify the source of your pain.
Next, we’ll conduct a full pelvic exam. Externally, we will look at your hips, abdomen, and posterior sacrum. Internally, we will evaluate the nerves and the muscles within the pelvic area. This full exam is necessary , as it will help our pelvic pain specialists understand the connection between your symptoms, and your nerve and muscle pain and dysfunction. There is no speculum, so the exam is gentle and more comfortable than that of, for example, gynecological exams you may have experienced in the past.
We will discuss our findings with you and come up with a comprehensive treatment plan TOGETHER. We want you to know that your pain is validated and that we are here to work with you on getting you back to the life you deserve.

Experience Relief From Chronic Prostatitis.