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Meta-Analysis
. 2018 Nov;12(6):2136-2143.
doi: 10.1177/1557988318797409. Epub 2018 Sep 5.

The Early Use of Vacuum Therapy for Penile Rehabilitation After Radical Prostatectomy: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Feng Qin  1 , Shuzhen Wang  2 , Jinhong Li  1   3 , Changjing Wu  1 , Jiuhong Yuan  1   3
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

The Early Use of Vacuum Therapy for Penile Rehabilitation After Radical Prostatectomy: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Feng Qin et al. Am J Mens Health. 2018 Nov.

Abstract

Vacuum therapy has been widely used for penile rehabilitation after radical prostatectomy (RP), but its efficacy and safety are unclear. The study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the early use of vacuum therapy for post-RP men. Randomized clinical trials were selected according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. RevMan 5.3 software was used for meta-analyses. In total, six randomized controlled trials were included with a total of 273 post-RP patients. The meta-analysis revealed that the early use of vacuum therapy could significantly improve the five-item International Index of Erectile Function and penile shrinkage in post-RP patients. Few adverse events were reported across the included studies. This review suggests that the early use of vacuum therapy appears to have excellent therapeutic effect on post-RP patients and no serious side effects were identified. Due to overall limited quality of the included studies, the therapeutic benefit of vacuum therapy in penile rehabilitation needs be substantiated to a limited degree in the future. Better methodological, large controlled trials are expected to verify the therapeutic effect of vacuum therapy in penile rehabilitation.

Keywords: erectile dysfunction; penile rehabilitation; penile shrinkage; radical prostatectomy; sexuality; vacuum therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Study selection process for the meta-analysis with specifications of reasons.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Methodological quality assessment of the risk of bias for each included study. formula image = low risk of bias; formula image = unclear risk of bias; formula image = high risk of bias.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Forest plot for meta-analysis of the IIEF-5 score in patients after RP. CI = confidence interval; IV = intravenous; SD = standard deviation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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