Dr. Kaplan discusses inflatable penile prosthesis placement

In this video, Charles Kaplan, MD, discusses inflatable penile prosthesis placement. Kaplan is a urologist with Georgia Urology.

Transcription:

What aspects of men’s health/erectile dysfunction do you feel are underappreciated/underreported?

I feel like there's still a lot of lack of knowledge about the more advanced treatments for men's health; specifically, penile implants. Locally, there's always a big push you hear on the radio about men's health clinics, but those are not discussing, obviously, surgical treatments. They're usually not done by urologists; they're just injections or testosterone replacement. So I feel like there is a gap and a lack of knowledge, at least for the patients, about penile implants.

You have been designated an IPP Center of Excellence. What have you learned about IPP placement over time that has helped you to achieve this distinction?

That took a lot of years of experience and a lot of surgeries to get to that point. I think it's basically doing more surgeries, you get more familiar with it, and you get better at your techniques, and the main thing is that you have better outcomes. And once you have better outcomes people learn about it pretty quickly, and they seek you out.

Are there any emerging technologies or advancements in penile implant design or surgical techniques that you see as particularly promising for improving patient outcomes or expanding candidacy for this procedure?

I think the future of implants is going to be the electronic penile implant. And that's still probably 5 or 6 years away. It will still be inflatable. It's an inflatable device, except instead of there being a pump in the scrotum, there's going to be an app on your phone, and the pump will be just under the skin. And it's rechargeable. That's how the fluid will go into the cylinders. And from my experience, that's the hardest part for patients - getting the implant inflated. So this, obviously, will make it much easier. There'll be a lot more safety controls for patients because you can set it up so they'll deflate it after a certain period of time in case they don't do it. That's going to be the future, and that will allow a lot more patients to be able to use penile implants when that becomes available.

This transcription was edited for clarity.