King Charles III has been admitted to a London hospital for a procedure to treat an enlarged prostate, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Friday.
News images showed Charles arriving around 9 a.m. at the London Clinic, a private hospital, where his daughter-in-law Catherine, Princess of Wales, is recovering from abdominal surgery.
The palace announced the king’s pending treatment last week shortly after the news that Catherine, Prince William’s wife, had undergone surgery in London. Her office in Kensington Palace said she would remain in the hospital for 10 to 14 days to recover.
The king’s recovery is expected to be much swifter, though the palace did not say how long he was expected to stay in the hospital. By announcing his elective prostate procedure in advance, the palace said, Charles, 75, hoped to encourage other men with similar symptoms to get checked.
“The king was this morning admitted to a London hospital for scheduled treatment,” the palace said in a statement. “His Majesty would like to thank all those who sent their good wishes over the past week, and is delighted to learn the diagnosis is having a positive impact on public health awareness.”
Benign prostate enlargement is common in men over age 50, according to Britain’s National Health Service. It can be found in up to 90 percent of men over 70. Symptoms include difficulty urinating and urgency to urinate. It is not cancerous and it does not usually pose a serious health threat.
Treatment includes medication and changes to diet and lifestyle, as well as surgical procedures in more severe cases to remove excess tissue from the prostate gland. Buckingham Palace did not describe the procedure that Charles would undergo.
Medical experts said that the most common treatment was a transurethral resection of the prostate, in which a surgeon scrapes out the inside of the prostate gland, giving the urethra more space.
Charles’s planned treatment follows a period of troubling health news for the British royal family. In addition to Catherine, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and ex-wife of the king’s younger brother, Prince Andrew, said on Monday that she had been diagnosed with melanoma, a serious type of skin cancer.
It was her second cancer diagnosis within a year. Ms. Ferguson, 64, had spoken publicly about her decision to undergo a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery last year after a breast cancer diagnosis in the summer.
The London Clinic, an elite private institution in the Marylebone neighborhood of London, has treated other members of the royal family, as well as celebrities like the actress Elizabeth Taylor and foreign leaders like the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. John F. Kennedy, the future president, was told by doctors he had Addison’s disease while a patient at the hospital in 1947.