BERKELEY, CA (UroToday.com) - In men LUTS are common. BPH, a slowly progressive condition, accounts for most of the symptoms and bother associated with LUTS.
In the past, the primary aim of treatment was to wait until the symptoms and the bother associated with them was severe enough to warrant surgery. 
However, the introduction of selective α-blockers and 5α-reductase inhibitors (5ARIs) in the 1990s offered an alternative to the strategy of surgery-now vs surgery-later. Both α-blockers and 5ARIs were initially licensed for the relief of symptoms in the hope that this would lengthen the time to surgery but initially there were no recommendations on whom to treat and when. The resultant therapeutic strategy was what might be described as ‘sequential monotherapy,’ effectively, an intent to treat to failure, after which the patient was switched to another class of drug or offered surgery. ...View or save the Mini Review as a .pdf file.
Mark Emberton, John M. Fitzpatrick* and Jon Rees†
University College Hospital, London,† Backwell and Nailsea Medical Group, Bristol, UK, and *Mater Misericordiae Hospital and University College Dublin, Ireland
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