A Clinical Comparative Study between Visual Stimulated Erection and Nocturnal Penile Erection by RigiScan

Oh, Moon Mock; Kim, Sae Chul

Abstract

With 80 cases of impotent patients (30 psychogenic, 50 organic : 39 vasculogenic, 2 neurogenic, 5 vasculogenic + neurogenic, 4 undetermined). we compared the penile rigidity and the change of penile circumference between the visual stimulated erection (VSE) and nocturnal penile erection (NPE) by RigiScan. The results were obtained as follows. 1. In psychogenic impotent patients, the maximal degree of penile rigidity of the basal and tip portions were similar in 21 NPE (70.0%) and 22 VSE (73.3%), and 6 VSE of above showed the rigidity below 10%. All 9 NPE (100%) and 5 VSE (62.5%), out of 9 NPE and 8 VSE dissociated cases, were more higher degree of rigidity in base than that of tip. 2. In organic impotent patients, the maximal degree of penile rigidity of the basal and tip portions were similar in 29 NPE (58.0%) and 39 VSE (78.0%), and 10 NPE (34.5%) and 22 VSE (56.4 %) of above showed the rigidity below 40%. Among the remainders 21 NPE and 11 VSE, the cases who represented dissociation, 18 NPE (85.7%) and 9 VSE (81.8%), the majority, were more higher degree of rigidity in base than that in tip. 3. There were 29 psychogenic (96.7%) and 30 organic (60.0%) impotent patients in NPE, and 7 psychogenic (23.3%) and 5 organic (10.0%) in VSE, who represented over 40% of rigidity more than 5 minutes both in tip and base of penis. 4. Among the all 80 cases, the changes in penile circumferences of the basal and tip portions were similar in 41 NPE (51.3%) and 39 VSE (48.8%), and in remainders, 26 NPE (66.7%) and 34 VSE (82.9%) showed more changes in base than tip. Therefore, we concluded that NPE is more significant than VSE for the diagnosis and evaluating the degree of organic impotence because the rigidity of NPE were more higher than VSE both in psychogenic and organic impotent patients. In the other hand, however, if VSE represents sufficient rigidity, enough rigidity will be expected in NPE, so VSE is useful screening test before NPE.