Viagra Failed? Let Medtronic Prop You Up
7 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 13th, 2009 // 4:41 pm
The little blue pill may not work for everyone, so what’s a guy to do? Maybe get a stent in order to, you guessed it, get a lift. Medtronic is conducting a small study to see if using a stent to prop open arteries near the penis can help men with erectile dysfunction, according to the device maker (here’s the statement).
The one-year study will include 50 patients at up to 10 U.S. medical centers. Studies have shown that up to half of the 25 million U.S. men who suffer from erectile dysfunction don’t respond to Viagra or Lilly’s Cialis, Jason Rogers, a cardiologist at the University of California at Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, tells Bloomberg.
“There is an unmet clinical need for some other therapy to help these men,” says Rogers, who is a researcher on the study. “Invasiveness and the lack of spontaneity for intercourse are two of the major drawbacks” of the alternatives to popular meds. “Our theory is there are men who have blockages in arteries that feed the penis and that limits their ability to get an erection. We are not putting stents inside the penis, or putting some rigid metal tubes in the penis to make it stiff.”
As you know, stents are used to open arteries. So here’s how it works: a tiny mesh tube coated with a drug would be threaded though a small incision in the body and implanted in arteries that supply blood to the penis, according to Rogers, who notes that adequate blood flow to the penis is necessary for a man to achieve an erection. But he says as many as 70 percent of men with heart disease also report some problems achieving an erection.
Justice in Michigan
Yikes. The whole stent industry opens up (so to speak) another can of worms (so to speak).
Do we know whether Dr. Rogers and Medtronic are dating?
Nathan
Ed,
Nice photo, nice title, nice writing — it’s refreshing to start my morning with a dose of Pharmalot again!
harpy
“invasiveness” is the problem with the pill?
Justice in Michigan
Harpy and Nathan–Great to see you back here.
I’m guessing “invasiveness” was intended to refer to what Ed refers to as “rigid metal tubes”….
harpy
“There is an unmet clinical need for some other therapy to help these men,” says Rogers, who is a researcher on the study. “Invasiveness and the lack of spontaneity for intercourse are two of the major drawbacks” of the alternatives to popular meds.
I thought it was a funny choice of words…considering the alternative he’s proposing.
Good to see you, too, JiM. Will you be continuing with Pharmalittle?
harpy
Unless I read that wrong. :(
Justice in Michigan
Hi Harpy,
PharmaLittle is a group endeavor, so I can only speak for myself. Odds are we will continue with posts that are less “latest news” (never really did that) than a combination of policy questions, reflections, and satire (like our Peanut Thread, which is still my favorite), and some of the issues that are our “specialities,” like drug and device preemption.
We have a thread now on why folks not otherwise involved “professionally” get “hooked on drugs” (the topic) which is of the sort I’m talking about.
Not that I know anything about this, but the device that–in essence–”pumped you up” always seemed to me something that couples could have fun with. It’s probably before your time, but, when I was a kid, there were these little water rockets….