Harry B (2)

Harry came back a much more relaxed man than last time. Nothing had changed with his treatment but I think he’d found out that coming here wasn’t as scary as he’d imagined and he’d enjoyed having some time to talk through his problems. With his medical background and history it was certainly a physical (sometimes called ‘organic’) erectile problem. He told me he’d tried Viagra 100mg and Cialis 20mg. These are the top doses of drugs which enhance the sexual response and allow more blood to get pumped into the penis to cause erection. He’d followed all the rules about giving the drug time to work, being sexually stimulated, trying the drug at least 12 times, and being relaxed (if appropriate, I encourage patients to have lots of foreplay but a brief ban on intercourse – this helps reduce the pressure on men to ‘perform’ and allows a better response), but these hadn’t worked at all. In fact there are a good number of people for whom these drugs just don’t work, but fortunately there are other, stronger, drugs available to boost erections. We discussed some of his other options; like using a vacuum erection device, MUSE (a pellet of drug inserted down the urethra), Intracavernosal Injection (ICI) of a drug (a small and painless needle jab in the side of the penis, and a combination of some of the above treatments. I’ve given Harry information leaflets on all these and he’s going to consider how he and his wife would like to tackle the problem next.