Demographics of penile prosthesis patients undergoing significantchange

The population of patients being treated with a penile prosthesis for erectile dysfunction is evolving, with the average patient now being older and having more medical comorbidities compared with less than 20 years ago, according to the results of a nationwide epidemiologic study reported by University of Michigan urologists.

The analyses were performed using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database, which represents a 20% stratified sample of annual hospital discharges in the United States. Data were extracted for over 29,000 patients discharged between 1988 and 2002 with an ICD-9 procedural code for insertion of a penile prosthesis. The men were divided into tertiles based on year of discharge and those subgroups were compared for various characteristics.

From the first to the last 5-year period, there were significant increases in mean patient age (60.26 vs. 62.51 years) and in the proportion of patients with significant medical comorbidities, defined as a Charlson Index score of 2 or greater (20.5% vs. 39.6%).

"The availability of the oral phosphodiesterase type-5 inhibitors and the direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns for those medications has greatly increased public awareness that ED is a treatable condition and caused more men to seek help from a physician," said co-author David A. Taub, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.