ROME (ITALPRESS) – Erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease seem like distant problems, but they actually share several risk factors and often occur in the same individual. In fact, epidemiological studies have revealed that men with heart problems are more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction than the healthy population.
In particular, erectile problems can precede a cardiovascular event by about 3 to 5 years, thus proving to be a valuable “wake-up call,” if heeded. Erectile dysfunction “is the inability to achieve and maintain an erection during to have satisfactory intercourse. There are usually two types: The ‘performance anxiety’ one of the young boy, which is easily identifiable and can be resolved with little expense, and the one of the adult person with a lot of risk factors, which is a vascular, progressive and chronic disease that carries with it risks of another nature,” said Piero Montorsi, full professor of Cardiovascular Diseases at Milan State University and director of the Department of Interventional Cardiology at the Monzino Cardiology Center, interviewed by Marco Klinger for Medicina Top, a TV format of the Italpress news agency.
“Among the most frequent causes are all vascular diseases, from hypertension to ischemic heart disease to diabetes. Diagnosis is the main step: unfortunately, the patient does not tell–due to lack of interest or mostly embarrassment–and the doctor often does not have time to ask a very simple question that would open the field to something more, and time is lost. The severity of the disease, the time between when it started and when the doctor found out, and its importance make the disease more important,” he added.
Erectile dysfunction “is related to the fact that not enough blood gets into the penis at the time of intercourse-there are phosphodiesterase inhibitor drugs” that “are supposed to feed some vasodilation and, in 70% of cases, improve the issue. They are drugs now used widely” but “only feared because when the famous Viagra came out, many people took it” but “didn’t know they had diseased coronary arteries and had problems.”
In addition, Montorsi clarified, “a patient who has had a heart attack may very well not have had erectile dysfunction, but in the post-infarction period the fear of aggravating the cardiological situation with sexual activity often leads to less sexual activity,” a correlation that “needs to be debunked, because once the cardiological situation is fixed the cost of sexual activity in a ‘long standing’ and problem-free couple is really low for the heart.”
Are there any drugs that can cause erectile dysfunction? “They are thiazide diuretics that are frequently used for example in the treatment of hypertension, which are the most indicted. Antidepressants can also bother.”
Nowadays, even andrologists “increasingly ask for cardiological evaluation before prescribing certain medications. Certain urological conditions can also promote erectile dysfunction; the two are very much joined together.”
Can there also be female sexual dysfunction? “The world of sexual dysfunction in women is much more complex: there are many situations related to diseases, medications she takes, difficulty in sexual intercourse due to pain, lack of orgasm or arousal. In all these causes, the sexologist can play an important role in clarifying where the disease begins,” he explained.
“If we are to compare with the vascular problem in men, there are stages during intercourse in women that are related to vasodilation: if the woman has heart disease with risk factor she might have less lubrication, or less vasodilation in the labia majora and vagina.”
-Photo taken from video Medicine Top-
(ITALPRESS).
