AB008. The link between erectile dysfunction (ED) and cardiovascular disease (CVD): what a urologist needs to know

Background and Objective: Erectile dysfunction (ED), or male impotence, is defined as the consistent inability to achieve and/or maintain an erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual activity, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). With the rapidly aging population, it has been projected to have 322 million men with erectile dysfunction by 2025 and the largest increase will happen in the developing world; Asia, Africa and South America. To describe the link between erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease and to review the role of urologists in identifying and referring patients with erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular risk factors.

Methods: A systematic review of published peer-reviewed literature will be done to test the association between erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular diseases. We will search the PubMed, Embase and Cochrane database of systematic reviews to identify data using search criteria; men with erectile dysfunction, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, dyslipidaemia, and smoking.

Results: It has been found that the traditional risk factors to detect cardiovascular risk are missing lots of patients which lead to significant morbidity and mortality. The new opportunity to discover patients at risk of cardiovascular disease by doing the penile Doppler ultrasound and measuring the peak systolic velocity of the penile artery will help in diagnosing many patients with hidden cardiovascular risk, Gupta et al. Even men with mild erectile dysfunction are always neglected from both sides of clinicians and patients and it has been believed that by paying attention to those patients we can delay or prevent secondary cardiovascular and metabolic diseases with a great opportunity to improve patients’ quality of life, Deng et al. It has been realized that using a multiple linear regression analysis, the presence of metabolic syndrome components were associated with increased incidence of erectile dysfunction and hence raised the flag to set strategies to control the epidemic of metabolic syndrome increase and to enhance the early diagnosis of erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease, Sanjay et al.

Conclusions: Erectile dysfunction is a prevalent condition affecting middle age and elderly men. Prevalence of erectile dysfunction increases with age and other co-morbid conditions as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidaemia, obesity, smoking and depression. Erectile dysfunction is not a life threatening condition but it erodes couples’ quality of life. It is also considered as sharing the same link and risk factors with cardiovascular diseases. From the mentioned literature, we would like to leverage the awareness about the need for asking about erectile dysfunction in order to diagnose patients at risk for cardiovascular diseases.

Keywords: Erectile dysfunction (ED); metabolic syndrome; cardiovascular disease (CVD); hypertension; diabetes mellitus; obesity; dyslipidaemia; depression; smoking