Spontaneous erections in a patient with erectile dysfunction after palliative chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer

Erectile dysfunction is a common problem, especially among older men. It is often caused by psychological problems, and is also the reason for pronoun ced impairment of psychosocial well-being. Many systemic diseases, genitour inary surgery, drugs, particularly antihypertensive and psychotropic drugs, and also chemotherapeutic agents and dexamethasone are attributed as being causes of erectile dysfunction. In our case, severe erectile dysfunction w as present for 8 months before non-small cell lung cancer was diagnosed. No rmal sexual function, observed for a short period immediately following che motherapy, is a highly unusual finding and has not been published before. C hemotherapeutic agents have repeatedly been shown to result in cessation of sexual function including erection. While we cannot offer a definite expla nation for our findings, undefined paraneoplastic processes leading to erec tile dysfunction amenable to successful cytotoxic intervention could be a p ossible explanation for our observation. Copyright (C) 2001 S.Karger AG, Ba sel.