If your quality of life is good, and if you can live with the
symptoms, and don't like the idea of surgery, then don't have surgery.
It is your decision.

My uro says, try meds first. If they don't work well enough, then
consider surgery, but as mentioned, that depends on how you feel about
it.

If you have had a couple of episodes of acute urinary retention, then
surgery is usually recommended.

Ed

It is all up to you.  Too much retention can be harmful.  Talk to the
Dr. about it.  Depends on your age as well.  I didn't want to get too
old to where I could not have the surgery.  And was getting up about
every couple hours.  Retention was rather large too.  I tried medication
and it did not agree with me.  I tried TUMT and it didn't have much of
any effect.  One of the first actions I did, after reading about the
results of PVP, was to switch to a URO who does PVP.  TURP I wanted to
avoid.  After a couple years I finally went with PVP.  That also gave
the doctor time to get more experience with PVP..

Again, does your doctor do PVP?

Try the American Urological Association BPH Symptom Index:

http://godot.urol.uic.edu/~web/ASIS.html

http://www.webmd.com/solutions/enlarged_prostate/treatment-options

Quite a cheering squad for PVP here. While they might be right
(although evidence is lacking) it doesn't sound like you're anywhere
near surgery.

Yikes! YOU are in charge of your own body. YOU consent (or not) to any
procedures, drugs, probing, touching, surgery, invasive diagnostic
techniques, etc. The MD doesn't decide at all. He may propose and must
give you enough information so that you can make an informed decision
but it's always YOUR call.

While taking Terazosin, I suppose. If you have no problems with
retention or flow it looks like you have that under control. Why
change? If there's some other reason you could try one of the more
modern alpha-1 blockers such as Flomax or Uroxatral.

Meaning you pee every three hours? I don't find that excessive but if
you do (and the night time's probably annoying) you could consider
suggesting to your urologist that he add a low dose anti-muscarinic
such as Enablex.

BPH has two elements: irritative symptoms (frequency, urge) and
obstructive symptoms. Terazosin deals with the obstructive side and
because retention is the more serious problem most treatment up to
recently has left it at that. Adding an anti-muscarinic will reduce
the urge (it's usually used for over-active bladder) but may aggravate
obstruction, or such was the prior thinking. In the 2006 American
Urology Association conference there's a report on the combined use
which seems to indicate that the fears were exaggerated. See:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/537510

(scroll down to the third heading)

Good luck.

You live with what you can live with.

Good reason for your "concern" about surgery.

Sometime after age 55 I was up to 5 trips each night.  Personal
decision: 5x was too often.  GP's fingerwave found "considerable" left
lobe enlargement.  He offered Hytrin or Flomax.  Had heard about Saw
Palmetto in this ng and asked.  He said, give it a try and follow the
instructions on the bottle.  Started with pills and switched to
capsules.  Noted some help in a week.  Stable in about 45 days.  Ran
one, sometimes two visits a night.  PSA started dropping from 2.50.

Kept up with Saw for about 6 to 8 years.  Started experiencing P.E.,
decreased Saw dose to three times a week, then to zero.  Prostate has
been "normal" since age 68 -- became E.D. med dependent at that time.

Residual is a problem near the bladder neck that is handled nicely with
1mg of Hytrin each morning.  Prostate has been stable since 1999.  PSA
ranges from 0.6 to 0.8.  Up once each night.  The bladder neck issue has
been looked at by my Uro.  He says that PVP would yield a 20% shot of
complete success with no residual effects (retrograde, recurrence of
neck area tension, etc.)

I've opted to stick with Hytrin.

...Lmac