[NPT: nocturnal penile tumescence test].

The recording of the variations of penile tumescence and rigidity during nocturnal unconscious erections that usually occur with the REM phases of sleep, has been considered the diagnostic tool of choice in the workup of erectile disturbances for a number of years. Such a success is partly due to its absence of invasiveness. Moreover this test was believed to allow to differentiate between the psychogenic and organic origin of impotence. As some authors have recently reported, anxiety state (common among patients who undergo invasive andrological procedure in the office) can at times influence the content of the dream state, thus negatively affecting the spontaneous nocturnal erections. Besides, sleep disturbances such as apnea and motor agitation can also induce erroneous interpretations of NPT graphs. Further, dysfunctions at the level of the cortex and the spine still allow the occurrence of nocturnal tumescence but determine an erectile deficit in the awake state. Clinically, all this poses new questions about the effectiveness of the NPT test in the study of the origin of impotence. The diagnostic methods, despite its world-wide diffusion, remains, under certain aspects, obscure: the operative details and, above all, its interpretative criteria. All this impedes the achievement of uniformity in the evaluation of the results obtained thanks to this test (e.g. the number and duration of erectile episodes, the interpretation of tumescence on its own, of the basal-apical dissociation, of the erectile episodes occurring immediately before waking, and of those of short duration).