Dr. Tom Walsh, University of Washington urologist, discusses the definition of erectile dysfunction and the causes of erectile dysfunction.
**Below is a transcript of the video**
Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Tom Walsh. I am a board-certified urologist and I am the director of the UW Medicine Men’s Health Center. The Men’s Health Center is a clinical center that is really designed around men with the intent of treating male-specific conditions related to reproductive, sexual, hormonal, and just overall health but that really caters to men.
I’ve been asked today to answer some specific questions about male physiology and in particular male erection and erectile dysfunction.
What causes an erection?
Erection, in medical terms, is a neurovascular event. That means that it is the engorgement of the male penis that is brought on by nerve stimulation that usually emanates from a man’s libido or sexual arousal. That nerve stimulation causes blood vessels that supply penis to become very engorged. And when they become engorged enough, they actually pinch off the blood exiting the penis to the point where blood inside the penis, the pressure rises to above a man’s systolic blood pressure. That is all initiated by a nerve system in the body called the parasympathetic nervous system that stimulate the cavernosal arteries and that’s what causes penile erection.
What is erectile dysfunction?
Erectile dysfunction is when something in that pathway is not functioning optimally or is altogether broken. Erectile dysfunction creates a clinical situation in which a man cannot obtain or maintain an erection that’s adequate for him, and usually that’s for normal sexual intercourse.
What causes erectile dysfunction?
A whole host of things cause erectile dysfunction. What I explained to you about erection really helps inform what causes E.D. or erectile dysfunction. So if a man loses his libido or his sexual desire, that can lead to E.D. When he loses the ability of the nerves to work to stimulate early dilation, that can cause E.D.
What damage these nerves?
Diseases like diabetes or other neurologic diseases, injury from surgery like removal of the prostate for prostate cancer or certain types of colorectal cancer or radiation damages the nerves.
If there is injury to the blood vessels that dilate to cause the erection, that also causes E.D. and that’s probably the most common cause. From the moment we’re born our bodies begin to experience certain forms of cardiovascular disease where the arteries stiffen or we develop arteriosclerosis, which is the disease that leads to heart attacks. So E.D. is also related to cardiovascular disease.
Those are the primary things that lead to loss of male erection.
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