Gray-Scale Ultrasound to Assess Persistent Erectile Dysfunction in Young Men
June 2018
in “
The Journal of Sexual Medicine
”
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Studysummary This study used high-resolution ultrasound to investigate the pathophysiology of persistent erectile dysfunction in young men who used the drug finasteride, observing differences in erectile tissue homogeneity compared to control subjects without finasteride exposure. Our plain-language summary of this paper — not a Tressless recommendation.
In a study of 27 young men with persistent erectile dysfunction (PED) after using finasteride for androgenic alopecia, high-resolution gray-scale ultrasound (GSU) was used to assess cavernosal erectile tissue fibrosis (CETF). The participants, with an average age of 31 and no significant cardiovascular risk factors, had been potent prior to finasteride use and were under 40 years old. They underwent GSU with a high-frequency probe during maximal pharmacologic erection. The results showed that 96% of the PED patients demonstrated a lack of homogeneity and the presence of hyperechoic/hypoechoic regions in erectile tissue, indicating fibrosis. These findings were confirmed by an independent ultrasound expert and suggest that high-resolution GSU is an effective and non-invasive method to assess CETF in men with PED from finasteride use.
