Firing shock-waves into the body could be a radical new way to boost the love lives of men with erection problems. The pain-free therapy boosts performance by stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in the genital area.
...The radical new therapy, which is on trial in Israel, uses a very mild form of lithotripsy, a technique developed more than 20 years ago for the treatment of kidney stones.
Waves of sound are beamed through the skin, and although they pass harmlessly through body tissue, they are at just the right pressure to smash up kidney stones into tiny sand-like particles that are then passed out of the body in urine.
But in recent years, several studies have also shown that this type of shock-wave therapy appears to have a healthy effect on blood vessels.
It triggers the release of an important substance called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor, or VEGF, which sends out a signal for new blood vessels to start growing...Some health experts are now convinced there is a close link between impotence and heart disease, and that problems in the bedroom can often signal hidden blockages in blood vessels near the heart which are reducing blood flow around the body.
Doctors at the Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, recruited 20 men with an average age of 56 to take part in the trial.
All 20 were already on medication and had suffered mild to moderate erection problems for an average of three years...
I searched for corroborating sources at Google News but couldn't find any.
There was this from two years ago (seems the hospital's interest in the subject is intense):-
New study conducted at Haifa's Rambam hospital seeks to determine whether toxin found in spiders' venom can be used to treat erectile dysfunction, after researchers found men who had been bit by spiders suffered from unusually prolonged erections
Ah, here it is:
New research from Israel presented to the European Society of Sexual Medicine in Lyon, France in November suggests that a “shocking” new therapy might work to reinvigorate the male sexual organ in a very safe and effective manner. So far, the benefits of the treatment appear to be long lasting.
Dr. Yoram Vardi, head of the Neuro-Urology Department at the Ramban Medical center in Haifa, Israel, has found that the same device that uses shockwaves to blast kidney stones appears to have a restorative effect on the blood vessels of the penis.
In an initial study of 20 middle-aged men with erectile dysfunction – an inability to maintain an erection – for more than three years, researchers conducted a series of treatments that comprised three weeks of shockwave therapy administered in two 20-minute sessions each week.
The patients were allowed to rest for three weeks and then an additional course of low-dose shockwave treatments, with about 100 bars of pressure per shockwave, was administered over another three-week period, using a device that resembles a computer mouse.
Vardi found mostly consistent results in all 15 of the 20 men who benefited from the therapy. All the men noted a return of erectile functioning around the seven-week mark, and a six-month follow-up found that for 13 of the men, the effects were long lasting, while two will require additional treatments.
“There was no pain or additional side effects within six months,” Vardi tells ISRAEL21c. “There was an improvement [in erectile function]. A huge improvement.”
Israel, land of promise?
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