Negative stress echocardiographic study predicts excellent long-term prognosis in patients with erectile dysfunction

Background: Subjects with erectile dysfunction share common risk factors as those for coronary artery disease. However, there are no data on the role of stress echocardiography in assessing the prognosis of patients with erectile dysfunction. Hypothesis: We sought to determine the prognostic utility of negative stress echocardiography study in subjects with erectile dysfunction and compare it to similar subjects without erectile dysfunction. Methods: Between October 1996 and December 1997, 236 patients had negative stress echocardiograms. There were 28 patients with erectile dysfunction. There was a higher prevalence of diabetes in the erectile dysfunction group (64% vs. 35%, P=0.005). The prevalence of other risk factors was similar in the two groups. Follow-up was obtained for 233 patients for a mean duration of 25 months. Results: At the end of follow-up, there was no significant difference in the annualized occurrence of cardiac events between the two groups (4.6% vs. 4.3%, P=NS). Of note, none of the patients were prescribed sildenafil and none of the cardiac events were related to sexual activity. Conclusions: Our study shows that subjects with erectile dysfunction who have a negative stress echocardiographic study have a comparable event rate to similar subjects at high risk for cardiac events on long-term follow-up.