INGECTION TREATMENTS FOR ED

GENERAL SIDE EFFECTS OF INJECTION THERAPY

1.         Pain in 50 per cent of patients using only Prostaglandin.
2.         Hypotension: if a patient is given a large dose of injection medication into the penis, he may develop light headedness. This is due to a drop in blood pressure. It results from the dilating effect of the drugs admiistered. It occurs in less than one per cent of patients.
3.         Scar tissue formation: a long-term complication of injection therapy is the formation of small nodules or scar tissue at the injection site. This occurs in about 10 per cent of cases. It can be prevented by using small volumes of medication and by varying the site of the injection.
4.         Priapism: the incidence varies according to the type of medication used and the experience of the practitioner administering it. The incidence of priapism while using Prostaglandin Ei alone is less than if it is used in combination with one or more other vasoactive drugs.
5.         Infection: the incidence of infection while using injection therapy is very low. However, the correct precautions need to be adhered to. These include: washing the hands and penis before injecting; cleaning the site of injection and the top of your medication bottle with an alcohol swab; using a new syringe each time; and ensuring that the needle does not come in to contact with anything else other than the top of the bottle, the syringe cap and the skin of the penis.
6.         Bruising: this occurs as a direct result of piercing a blood vessel in the penis. Unfortunately, we are unable to see blood vessels that lie deep below the surface. Those vessels on the surface are quite easy to miss. If you refer to the drawings of the anatomy of the penis on page 5 and 21, you will also notice the presence of blood vessels running along the top of the penis.
One should try to avoid hitting any of the blood vessels. However, such bruises are usually quite harmless. They disappear in 5 to 10 days, and they are painless. There is very little damage done and the long-term effects are negligible.
Those people who bruise easily for whatever reason on warfarin or aspirin, or those who have clotting disorders like low platelets, should be more careful. If bruising is persistent, you should be shown again how to inject yourself. One sure way of reducing the incidence of bruising is to put pressure over the site of the injection once you have removed the needle. This you can do with your thumb. It should remain in place for at least one minute, or up to three minutes or more if you have a bleeding disorder. Don't massage the site as this may induce more bleedingjust apply constant pressure.
7.          Piercing the urethra: the urethra runs in the corpus spongiosum along the undersuface (ventral surface) of the penis. By piercing the urethra, spots of blood may appear at the urethral opening at the tip of the penis. This can be prevented by ensuring that the injection site is not too far down the side of the penis, ie, it should be between eleven and one o'clock.
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