For Men, Peyronie’s a Touchy Topic — But Help is Available

July 28, 2022 – Dennis Wallace’s journey by his remedy of a little-discussed male dysfunction began 5 years in the past with a “Hmm” second, adopted by little dialogue.

“I just started to notice a bend in my penis when it was erect,” says Wallace. He confirmed his spouse, Lisa, who replied, “It looks fine to me. Put it away.” He did, in physique and in thoughts. “I really didn’t think about it too much.”

While males haven’t any purpose to anticipate a ruler-straight erection, Wallace’s bend shortly sharpened to 45 levels about 2 inches from the pinnacle. He quickly turned unable to have intercourse. Plaque that had fashioned on the highest aspect of his penis was answerable for the curve.

Overall, it was shorter when erect.

A clinician really useful a $1,200 tube of medicine that may break down the plaque. He was urged to bend his penis in opposition to the curve. “You may hear a very loud crack,” Wallace remembers his physician saying. “I said, ‘Oh my God, really?’”
Wallace, a 60-year-old IT employee in Dubuque, IA, received few first rate remedy choices however did obtain a analysis: Peyronie’s illness. The connective tissue dysfunction results in the formation of scar tissue on the penis’s tunica albuginea, a blood-containing tube that expands throughout an erection. The scar tissue is believed to be the results of delicate or main traumas to the organ throughout sexual or athletic exercise.

Battle Scars

Amy Pearlman, MD, an assistant professor of urology on the University of Iowa, and the physician who lastly set Wallace on a correct course of remedy, compares the penis to a prizefighter who’s been “in a boxing ring for many years. Nobody gets in a boxing ring without getting out with scars.” And scar tissue doesn’t stretch.

The incidence of Peyronie’s varies, partly as a result of males are too embarrassed to debate the issue. Pearlman says the speed ranges between 0.5% and 20% of males. Wayne J.G. Hellstrom, MD, a professor of urology at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, places it at 4%.

Often the situation is painful. Men who’ve Peyronie’s are typically in center age and produce other circumstances, together with diabetes and erectile dysfunction – or each, in Wallace’s case.

Surgery, together with a penile implant, has been a remedy possibility, as have stretching workout routines and spring-loaded traction gadgets that bend the penis in the other way of the curve.

Wallace dismissed the surgical procedure possibility. “The first words out of my mouth was, ‘Nobody is taking a knife to it down there,’” he says.

The first FDA-approved nonsurgical remedy for Peyronie’s, an injectable drug referred to as Xiaflex, arrived in 2013. Xiaflex has grow to be a go-to possibility for treating Peyronie’s in males whose penis bends 30 levels or extra.

Hellstrom, who helped develop Xiaflex, says research have proven that 70% of males who obtain the four-course remedy see enchancment. Early research discovered a 34% enchancment – about 17 levels – in penile curvature. For Pearlman, a purpose is “not to be afraid of getting an erection.”

Endo Pharmaceuticals, which markets Xiaflex, launched an advert marketing campaign final fall that aimed to get the dialogue of Peyronie’s going once more. NFL viewers, a bull’s-eye demographic goal, received their first glimpse of the corporate’s “bent carrot” business urging those that have the situation to “talk to a urologist about what your manhood could look like.”

Snickering ensued in some corners, with some critics saying they didn’t need to see such an advert in the course of the dinner hour. Justin Mattice, Endo’s vp and basic supervisor of medical therapeutics, says the business was a light-weight method of tackling a critical topic.

Endo “spoke to the men who are suffering from the condition, but did it in a way that would clear network TV,” he says. “Bottom line is, it works.”

Peyronie’s is “a very distressing condition for people,” Pearlman says. “No father is telling his son about curvature.”

Before he acquired Xiaflex, Wallace says, he was “feeling kind of really bummed out. I thought there was going to be no solution to this. It’s kind of damaging to your mental health.”

Wallace says the remedy – which insurance coverage lined for him – was uncomfortable however not painful, though many sufferers do have ache.

“The next 3 or 4 days, your penis looks like an eggplant,” he says. “It’s completely black and blue and swollen.”

His curvature went from 45 levels to a much more manageable 20 levels. He nonetheless makes use of a penis pump and takes tablets for erectile dysfunction, however he says, “I feel like I’ve got the libido of a 20-year-old again.”

Man With a Mission

Wallace has grow to be an evangelist for treating Peyronie’s, typically by Facebook. At one level, he was in touch with three males, two of whom had been considering suicide. “That ripped me apart,” he says.

Often a giant impediment is males who don’t need to focus on their drawback.

“It’s very difficult to talk about, and men aren’t good overall advocates for their health,” Mattice says. “The partner in a relationship is clearly a driver in saying, ‘Things aren’t right.’” But “once they sort of go through that gauntlet, they’re almost relieved at how simple the treatment was.”

Hellstrom says he has seen extra sufferers on account of the “bent carrot” business. “It’s extremely effective,” he says. “There’s no reason to send patients home and wait and worry for that year. They should initiate treatment immediately.”

Xiaflex isn’t obtainable in every single place, so the remedy isn’t so easy. Allison Jenner of England described her husband’s bout with erectile dysfunction, and particularly Peyronie’s, as grueling.

“The sexual contact became less and less, and he became more angry, then gradually the anger gave way to depression,” she says. “We drifted apart and lived like strangers. It was just like living with a roommate, not a husband.”

Jenner’s husband was efficiently handled with a penis pump, the drug Cialis, and a constriction ring. Their intercourse life has improved, however “he has never discussed it with anyone.” Jenner has discovered folks like Wallace to be extraordinarily useful in getting males to open up.

“Maybe it was just time to give back,” Wallace says.