THE DIAGNOSTIC ROLE OF CAVERNOSOMETRY, CA VERNOSOGRAPHY AND CC-EMG INPATIENTS WITH ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION DUE TO EXCESSIVE CAVERNOUS OUTFLOW

Venous leakage was suspected in 155 patients with erectile dysfunction . In 27 patients with primary and 128 patients with secondary erectile dysfunction, pharmacocavernosometry and -graphy was done. 21/27 (78 % ) and 105/128 (82 %) patients showed venous leakage as (concomitant) e tiology of impotence. 17/21 (81 %) and 52/105 (49.5 %) presented with pathologic cavernosal drainage via a single venous system; 4/21 (19 %) and 53/105 (50.5 %) patients showed combined venous leakage. Maintena nce flow increased with age in the group with secondary impotence, how ever this finding was not statistically significant. The rate of maint enance flow corresponded to the erectile response to a standardized in tracavernosal injection of vasoactive drugs. The type of leakage corre sponded well to the maintenance flow when the single drainage type was compared to combined drainage. Also, the type of leakage corresponded to the response to intracavernosal pharmacotesting. Corpus caveraosum EMG (Single Potential Analysis of Cavernous Electric Activity = SPACE ) did not correlate to maintenance flow or to the response to intracav ernosal injections. 66/126 (52.4 %) patients with venous leakage and 1 2/29 (41.4 %) patients without leakage had abnormal CC-EMG findings. 1 6/29 (55.2 %) patients had a poor response to pharmacotesting despite the absence of venous leakage. Of the 16 patients, 13 (81.3 %) had an abnormal CC-EMG. These findings suggest that CC-EMG has no significant correlation with cavernosometry, Thus, CC-EMG contributes diagnostic information independent of the venoocclusive function measured by cave rnosometry.