Are you worried that your penis has a little bit of a curve? Well,
you might have Peyronie's disease. I'm Dr. Rena Malik, urologist and pelvic surgeon
and today I'm going to talk to you all about Peyronie's disease or curvature of the penis.
Make sure you stick around till the end of this video because I'm going to tell you about
the latest therapies for Peyronie's disease from a paper published as recently as 2020.
Peyronie's disease is actually an inflammatory disease that causes a curve in the penis and in
some cases can actually cause deformities of the penis and in severe cases erectile dysfunction.
It was first described in the 1700s and has been estimated to affect somewhere between 1 to 13
of men. Likely it's more than that but a lot of people will not seek care for something because
of the embarrassment associated with it. What are the symptoms of Peyronie's disease? Well you
may note that you have a bend in the penis towards one side or the other up or down or you may notice
that you have a deformity of the penis where it looks kind of like an hourglass in the early part
of peyronie's disease you may also notice some pain with erections and this is during the acute
phase the reason that we think peyronie's disease happens is that there are micro
traumas or injuries to the lining of the penis called the tunica albuginea and when you have
these injuries during intercourse they then heal and in some people who are more likely
to have inflammatory changes they actually create plaques in place of regular healing we see this
more commonly in certain people who have a genetic history maybe a history of dupitin's contracture
or contractures in the fingers and the hand and how do you treat it well in the acute phase
for the pain we typically recommend taking some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications like
motrin or ibuprofen or leave over the counter that can help or there is some data to suggest
that extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy of the penis can help with specifically pain during that
time none of those things will actually prevent the curvature from happening but they will help
you with the pain that occurs during that time after about six to 12 months you will then notice
that the pain resolves and you are left with a curvature of the penis and this is now called
the stable phase and where the large majority of the treatment is focused on for peyronie's
disease there are both surgical treatments and non-surgical treatments and the mainstay of
non-surgical treatments is typically intralesional injections meaning that they actually inject
the plaque itself with a number of different medications the three medications that are most
often used include collagenase interferon alpha 2b and varapamil and these medications the large
majority of them the side effects include bleeding swelling pain at the injection site and depending
on the medication there are some variety in side effects that you might experience the one thing to
be aware of is there is a very small risk of what we call corporal rupture which is essentially a
fracture of the penis this is a surgical emergency you need to come to the emergency room if that
does happen also the initial data on these injections shows about a 17 degree improvement
in the curvature after getting the injections the curvature is measured based on the straight
penis as being zero degrees if your curvature is more severe there are surgical options as well
there are surgical options called plications where you actually take the penis on the side
opposite of the plaque and you put these little stitches on that side to help straighten the penis
or there are excision and grafting so you actually cut out the plaque and graft it with some tissue
so that you can straighten the curvature that way interestingly in 2020 a paper came out looking at
traction therapy in peyronie's disease and what they did was they took men with peyronie's disease
and they randomized them to receive traction therapy using a device called resterex for either
30 minutes a day for three months 16 minutes a day for three months or 90 minutes a day for
three months and they checked how this improved their curvature their erectile function and the
length of their penis interestingly they found that even at 30 minutes a day traction therapy
improved the curvature by about 18 to 22 percent and increased the length of the penis by two to
two point three centimeters and generally speaking most people weren't really too bothered by using
it there was some little bit of discomfort and sometimes some redness from the device itself
overall patients seem to have no problems using the therapy so this is a really promising option
for patients with peperoni disease and i really hope that if you are suffering from it it's
something that you can try i will link the paper down below as well as the device so if you're
interested you can check it out as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it