ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION

Erectile dysfunction (ED) was defined as the inability to achieve or maintain an erection adequate for sexual satisfaction. And the prevalence rate of ED is estimated to be 10% to 20% worldwide. After the introduction of new oral drugs for the treatment of ED, most clinicians adopted a goal-oriented approach to treat most ED patients. However, the diagnostic approach should be individualized as impotence is not a life threatening but a functional disease. So revealing the underlying etiology of ED is very important for individual treatment.
Stamp Test: The third method that can be used at home by the patient is the stamp test(erection self –test). Men with organic impotence have few, if any, erections during their sleep. One can confirm an organic impotence by monitoring the nocturnal erections for several nights even at home using this procedure. A strip of four to six stamps (any kind) is used for each test .
ED could be divided into psychologic and organic ED by etiology, in which organic ED may be caused by vasculogenic, neurogenic or other factors. Nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT) monitoring was the acknowledged objective test for diagnosis of ED, which could distinguish psychogenic from organic impotence. Its’ function in male impotence penile erections naturally occur 3–5 times during sleep. The RigiScan device is the most reliable test to be used in NPT test.
And the absence of nocturnal erections does not indicate the etiology of the ED, even if due to an organic cause pharmacopenile color doppler ultrasonography (PCDU) may replace the NPT test because PCDU was repeatable and most organic ED was vascular origin.
So in this study, we investigated the function of RigiScan in the diagnosis of ED, and we also compare it with that of PCDU.