Erectile functioning of men treated for prostate carcinoma.

BACKGROUND Published reports of complication rates, such as erectile dysfunction, associated with treatments for prostate carcinoma are often used to guide patient decision-making and develop clinical guidelines. Unfortunately, the published data are largely comprised of case series from single institutions. Meta-analysis is a methodology for combining findings from several studies to produce a better result. METHODS A comprehensive literature review and subsequent meta-analysis of the rates of erectile dysfunction associated with external beam radiotherapy and radical prostatectomy was conducted. A simple logistic regression model was used to combine the data from 40 articles that met selection criteria. RESULTS The probability of maintaining erectile functioning after radiotherapy is 0.69. The probability after surgery is 0.42. This difference is significant. Analysis of the effects of variables such as patient age and stage of disease on erectile functioning could not be performed due to inconsistencies across studies and the limited number of studies reporting such variables. CONCLUSIONS The published data indicate that men with normal erectile functioning are more likely to retain this function after radiotherapy than after surgery. Attention is drawn to the weaknesses in the reviewed studies in the hope that the clinical trials of emerging treatments, such as cryotherapy, brachytherapy, three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, and neoadjuvant hormones can be strengthened to reflect more accurately the rate of treatment-associated erectile dysfunction.