Word: cavernosa
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Healthy nervous and circulatory systems are vital to achieving and maintaining an erection, researchers explain. When a man is sexually aroused, stimulated nerves trigger a chemical reaction that causes the corpora cavernosa, two rod-shaped bundles of spongy muscle that run along each side of the penis, to relax and draw in extra blood. As the chambers fill, they expand, pressing shut veins that normally drain blood from the organ. With blood coming in and none going out, the penis becomes rigid and erect...
...recently chaired an international conference on impotence research. But the vast majority of impotent men -- most are above age 55 -- are victims of poor habits or illness. Alcoholism, for example, can deaden nerves. Cigarette smoking can reduce blood flow to the penis by constricting vessels and causing the corpora cavernosa to lose elasticity. Diabetes, atherosclerosis and high blood pressure (and the medications used to treat it) can all have damaging effects...
...Injections of the drugs papaverine and phentolamine into the penis can counteract stiffening of the corpora cavernosa and thus permit engorgement with blood. Dosage is carefully balanced to produce an erection that lasts about two hours, and patients learn how to inject themselves. Urologists recommend that drug use be limited to ten times a month to avoid scarring. Occasionally a patient will suffer a prolonged erection; impotence clinics provide 24-hour emergency service to administer an antidote. Cost of the therapy: $1,200 to $2,400 a year. Robert Batts, 40, a former policeman in Hull, Mass., who became impotent...
...psychological in origin and is not helped by therapy-two kinds of penile implants are available. In one operation, which takes about an hour, an incision is made in the penis or just behind the scrotum and a semirigid silicone rod is inserted into each of the corpora cavernosa. Another technique is to implant only one rod between the two structures. The most popular device, developed in 1972 by Urologists Michael Small and Hernan. Carrion of the University of Miami School of Medicine, has a somewhat inconvenient result: a permanent erection. But a jock strap or tight shorts make...
...Baylor University Urologist F. Brantley Scott, Neurologist William Bradley and Bioengineer Gerald Timm. It too requires only a short operation, usually about an hour and a half. Through an incision in the abdomen or the scrotum, two expandable balloon-like cylinders are slipped into the corpora cavernosa. The cylinders are connected by tubing to a small spherical reservoir filled with fluid (which is placed near the bladder under the muscles of the abdominal wall) and to a pump (inserted into the scrotum). To achieve erection, a man squeezes the pump several times, forcing fluid into the cylinders and distending...