PENILE IMPLANT SURVEY – A GLOBAL SNAPSHOT OF PENILE IMPLANT AVAILABILITY AND PRACTICES (2025)

Objectives

Penile prosthetic surgery offers men with end stage ED a surgical solution to this issue. There are many penile prosthetic devices available on the market worldwide which include malleable and inflatable implants. Variations in patient and surgeon preferences exist but have not been previously documented, our study aims to assess this.

Methods

An electronic survey questionnaire on current penile implants practices was created on Survey Monkey and distributed to penile implanters globally via social media, ESGURS, EAU, ESSM, SMSNA, personal contacts and through snowball sampling. The survey contained 38 questions regarding penile implant availability, peri-operative cleaning and antibiotic preferences. It also contained various clinical scenarios with the intention of showing differences in decision making between implanters worldwide. Participants were also sub-categorised into low volume (<19/annum), high volume (20-49/annum) and ultra-high volume (>50/annum) penile implanters and subgroup analysis was performed using Fisher’s exact test.

Results

A total of 121 survey responses were received, of which 75 were complete responses. Of the 75 total responses, 65 participants (86.7%) perform penile implant surgery, 51.56% (33/65) of whom had subspecialty training in andrology. The most commonly used inflatable penile implant were Boston Scientific AMS CX (n = 76.9%) and Coloplast Titan Touch (n = 67.7%). The penoscrotal approach was the most frequently used method for inserting penile implants (n = 47/65, 72.3%), and was also the respondents’ preferred approach (n = 55/65, 84.6%). When inserting a three-piece implant, the space of retzius was the most commonly preferred site (n = 47/65, 72.3%). There was a statistically significant difference in respondents’ views regarding the importance of good diabetic control, with 34/37 respondents (91.9%) feeling strongly that it is important, 2/37 respondents (5.4%) feeling strongly that it is not important, and one respondent (2.7%) being unsure (p < 0.001). The question responses between groups were not statistically different, with the exception of preferred device for patients engaging in anal intercourse (p = 0.05) and preferred device in significant corporal fibrosis following penoscrotal detumescence (p = 0.045).

Conclusions

Our study gives some insight into variations in penile implant availability worldwide and into differences in clinical decisions by penile implanters.

Conflicts of Interest

Sarah Norton - Boston Scientific sponsored Fellowship.