June 28, 2018 – Erectile Dysfunction

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Anchor lead: Erectile dysfunction may predict heart disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Men with erectile dysfunction may experience more cardiovascular disease than men who don’t have the condition, new research by Michael Blaha, a preventive cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues has shown.

Blaha: What we found is that having erectile dysfunction is an independent predictor of developing cardiovascular disease over the next four or five years. The presence of erectile dysfunction is telling us something about abnormal circulation that is a predictor of future events. It is common, and there are a lot of folks at risk. One of the problems we see is that a lot of men come into the urologist complaining of erectile dysfunction, and they don’t have a comprehensive cardiovascular evaluation at that time. So I think we should take the opportunity, find those patients who are complaining of erectile dysfunction and also do a comprehensive evaluation of their cardiovascular function, and treatment of their risk factors. :32

Blaha found that men with erectile dysfunction were twice as likely as those without to experience heart attacks or strokes over the course of the study. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.