Surgery for Peyronie’s disease comes with risks, so when you and your urologist discuss the possibility of undergoing a surgical procedure to treat Peyronie’s disease, here are the four main criteria that you should meet.
- You should consider nonsurgical therapies first. If they fail, then you can investigate more invasive treatment.
- Your condition should be severe enough to prohibit satisfactory sexual intercourse. Performing surgery for Peyronie’s disease to correct mild to moderate penile curvature is not recommended because some degree of bend typically remains after surgery, either associated with residual disease or from scar tissue. Therefore, men usually are not satisfied with the end result of such surgery because the change is not significant enough.
- You should allow at least one year, and two is better, after the symptoms of Peyronie’s begin before you consider having surgery for Peyronie’s disease. This time span allows you and your doctor to be sure your condition is stable and that your symptoms will not resolve themselves or improve to a point where surgery is not necessary. During this one to two year period, you should try nonsurgical treatments. If calcification in the plaque occurs during this waiting period, this indicates that the condition is stable, and no further changes are expected. Once plaque and/or penile curvature have remained unchanged for six months, surgical options can be contemplated.
- You have erectile dysfunction that has not responded to medication therapy. This is an indication that you are a candidate for surgery for Peyronie’s disease that will treat both penile curvature and erectile dysfunction.
If you and your surgeon decide you qualify for a surgical procedure to correct Peyronie’s disease, a review of the risks and benefits of each of the surgical procedures, as well as the possibility of combining procedures, needs to be discussed.
