Impotency drug preferred to implant

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 38

Impotency drug preferred to implant

NZPA-AAP Sydney A new drug offered impotent men many advantages over the traditional treatment with penile implants, says a Sydney doctor. Dr Tim Skyring, urology registrar at Sydney’s Prince Henry Hospital, said injection into the penis with the drug papaverine caused erections lasting two to three hours, enabling intercourse. Dr Skyring said papaverine was far cheaper than implants which cost up to $5OOO and had to be surgically inserted into the penis. Men were able to inject themselves with papaverine, giving them control oyer when and how often

they had an erection. But implants were not reversible and 10 per cent of those/ whOL had them rarely or never./ used them. Dr Skyring said the long-term effects of papaverine were not yet known and in about 1 per cent of cases it caused prolonged erections lasting up to 24 hours. Since the end of last year 75 men had been involved In a pilot programme at the hospital to test the drug. If the long-term effects were shown to be minimal, papaverine was the ideal solution for about 75 per cent of impotent men, he told AAP outside a seminar organised by

Prince Henry and Royal North Shore hospitals’ splnal units. i ‘ ' Dr Skyring said he believe Sydney was the only Australian centre where the drug was used to tre<t ; impotence, although/ It was available elsewhere for use in vascular surgery. Its use had spread in Europe and the United States since its development five years ago. , Papaverine relaxes the blood vessels in the penis to allow stimulation of blood flow to the region. Dr Skyring said impotence was a major problem for paraplegics and between 10 and 20 per cent of men over the age of 60.