Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms/Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia and Erectile Dysfunction

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is very common in aging men and causes lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), which decrease health-related quality of life. A number of evidence suggests that other than aging, modifiable factors, such as increasing prostate volume, obesity, diet, dyslipidemia, hormonal imbalance, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, alcohol, and smoking, also contribute to the development of BPH and/or LUTS. More recently erectile dysfunction (ED) has been linked to LUTS/BPH as a part of this syndrome, suggesting that patients with BPH or LUTS easily develop ED, and that LUTS/BPH symptoms often coexist with ED. This chapter focuses on the physiology of ED, epidemiology, physiopathology, clinical aspects, and treatment of the combined phenotype LUTS/BPH-ED.