The Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital said on Tuesday that it's expanding its services providing "upgraded" benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) surgeries, so more patients can be treated.

A new service model, used to treat BPH, has been in use since late 2022, and has treated about 250 patients since then.

Ng Chi-fai, a cluster service coordinator at the New Territories East Cluster, said a minimally invasive procedure had been adopted, allowing patients to be treated outside the operating room.

"We are using water steam to heat up the prostate tissue, to make the prostate tissue die, and it will shrink the size of the prostate, or using some small pins to compress on the prostate tissue so that the prostate lumen, the channel, can be widened. Therefore, the patient can void better," he said.

"Traditionally, we are doing this procedure in the operating theatre. In our new surface model, we are using local anaesthesia, and we also perform the procedure in our day treatment centre."

Ng added that patients normally have to stay at the hospital for two days if they undergo the traditional surgery, but this is unnecessary with the upgraded service model.

"Patients have the procedure done within 15 to 30 minutes, and then after we observe them for maybe one or two hours, they will be discharged," he said, adding that whole process is completed within half a day.

Ng said the new service model enabled them to double the number of patients being treated, and the waiting time for patients had fallen to four months, from 12 months originally.

He said about 65 percent of patients using urinary catheters could receive the surgery within two months.