Do candidates for penile implant prefer their doctors or another implanted patient as their information source? Results of a pilot study.

Introduction: Erectile dysfunction incidence is about 19-26 cases for every 1000 men/year, requiring about 20,000 penile implants/year. There is high demand for information on the part of patients, however, there is a lack of evidence about the sources of information prior to penile implant and the figure of the Expert Patient (EP) has never been described in this area.

Aims: To evaluate the sources of information used by candidates for penile implant as well as to describe the role of the EP as an information source.