Penile venous surgery for cavernosal venous leakage: long-term results and retrospective studies

From February 1987 to September 1991, 122 men with erectile impotence and confirmed cavernosal venous leakage underwent penile venous surgery. After a postoperative follow-up of 36 months, only 18.8% of the patients had satisfactory erections without further therapy. Another 32.5% postoperatively converted to responders to intracavernous injection therapy with vasoactive drugs. Therefore, a total of 51.3% benefitted from the operation. Dynamic pharmacocavernography proved to be the most important examination in terms of establishing indication and prognosis. According to our results, there are two basically different forms of cavernosal venous leakage with different postoperative outcomes: primary and secondary corporeal incompetence. In many cases, an arterial cofactor was determined.