Axial penile rigidity influences patient and partner satisfaction after penile prosthesis implantation

Penile prosthesis implantation is one of the treatment choices that is kept for patients who were not satisfied with other treatments. Although penile prosthesis satisfaction rates are higher, there are some dissatisfied patients. The patients’ reasons are mostly shortness and softness of implanted prosthesis. It was previously demonstrated that penile axial rigidity of more than 500 grams is enough for successful vaginal intromission. To our knowledge, there is no study comparing axial rigidity of penile prosthesis and satisfaction.

The aim of this study was to examine whether axial rigidity of penile prosthesis had impact on patient and partner satisfaction.

We enrolled one hundred patients who were implanted penile prosthesis before to evaluate their penile axial rigidity. We used Rigidometry (by using the digital inflection rigidometer) to assess the minimal axial pressure to bend the implanted penis.

We demonstrated that mean axial pressure to bend the implanted penis was 984.8 ± 268.7 grams. Overall satisfaction score with the penile prosthesis implant was 4.55 and 4.49 (out of 5) in patients and partners, respectively. In total, seven men were unsatisfied with their implant and reported a mean satisfaction score of 0.6 ± 0.48 (out of 5). All prostheses types showed good and more than 500 grams axial rigidity. The patients with Ambicor type, which were buckled at about 710.5 grams, showed worse satisfaction rates in comparison to other prostheses in two patients. Digital inflection rigidometer results of other penile prosthesis types in unsatisfied patient were 842.0, 872.0, 887.0 and 920 g. in CX700, Titan, Genesis and Titan OTR, respectively.

We demonstrated that dissatisfaction rate was highest in Ambicor prosthesis implanted patients. Additionally, patients with 3-piece penile prosthesis were more satisfied than 2-piece or malleable ones, interestingly, although some cases had lower axial rigidity results.