New prostate procedure could bring relief to rural millions

A potential breakthrough in the treatment of benign enlargement of the gland may benefit men in China's countryside and across the globe. Zhao Xu reports.

Although it has been more than a decade, Jiang Hansheng can still remember the look on the face of "an expert in Beijing" when he eagerly explained a method he had experimented with for years to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia, or enlarged prostate gland, a condition that occurs frequently among men aged 60 and older.

"The expert simply smiled and shook his head slightly. And my heart sank," recalled Jiang, a retired urologist from Shandong province in East China. The open dismissal represented nothing new or surprising for the rural doctor, though. From the early 1990s, Jiang spent 10 years researching and performing a procedure called "balloon dilation of the prostrate"; he also expended a lot of time and effort attempting to convince his peers and superiors that the method was an effective treatment for BPH.