WASHINGTON - MEN with heart disease who also complain of erectile dysfunction die sooner than other male heart patients, researchers reported on Monday.
They found that men who had both conditions were twice as likely to die from any cause and twice as likely to have a heart attack than men with heart disease alone.
The researchers expressed concern that using drugs such as Pfizer's Viagra or Eli Lilly's Cialis to treat erectile dysfunction could mask the symptoms that point to widespread heart and artery disease and said men complaining of impotence should be checked by a cardiologist.
'Erectile dysfunction is something that regularly should be addressed in the medical history of patients; it might be a symptom of early atherosclerosis,' Dr Michael Bohm of the University of Saarland in Germany, who led the study, said in a statement.
His team studied 1,519 men in 13 countries taking part in some larger studies of various heart disease treatments. As part of the study the men were also asked if they had erectile dysfunction.
More than half of them, 55 per cent, did, Dr Bohm's team said in a report published in the journal Circulation and also presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology. During the two years of the study, 11.3 per cent of the patients who reported erectile dysfunction died, compared to 5.6 per cent of those with mild or no impotence problems. -- REUTERS
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