[Prostaglandin E1 injection in erectile dysfunction. Current diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities]

In erectile dysfunction formerly, for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, intracavernous injections of papaverine and the combination papaverine/phentolamine were employed. In recent years, promising results have been reported with prostaglandin E1. In a multicenter study, 10 to 20 micrograms prostaglandin E1 were administered for testing corpus cavernosum function. One hundred and fifteen out of 187 patients self-injected themselves with prostaglandin E1 at an average dose of about 13 micrograms. While priapism occurred in 5 to 10% of the patients injecting papaverine or papaverine/phentolamine, and fibrosis and tunica induration in 10 to 57% patients on long-term treatment, the risk of priapism was low in prostaglandin E1. Subsequently, induration and penile deviation were reported in 2 patients each. In this multicenter study, a subjective efficacy of more than 90% was observed, thus confirming similar results with prostaglandin E1 found in other studies. The present results show that prostaglandin E1 can be considered the drug of first choice for intracavernous injection treatment of erectile dysfunction.