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Changes in frequency of urology clinic visits and diagnosis of erectile dysfunction in Germany before and during COVID-19

2023; Elsevier BV; Volume: 71; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.respe.2023.102181

1773-0627

Siniša Štefanac, Lee Smith, Igor Grabovac, Louis Jacob, Guillermo F. López Sánchez, Petre Cristian Ilie, Ai Koyanagi, Tobias Schiffler, Karel Kostev,

Urinary Bladder and Prostate Research

To explore and analyze [1] the differences in the total number of patients visiting urology practices in Germany, [2] explore and analyze any differences in the number of newly diagnosed erectile dysfunction (ED) patients as well as [3] the number of new drug prescription, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany (April 2019-March 2020 and April 2020-March 2021).This retrospective cross-sectional study used data from the Disease Analyzer database (IQVIA) and included all patients aged ≥18 years with at least one visit to one of 85 urology practices across Germany. Outcomes were the mean number of patients with [1] new diagnosis of ED and [2] new prescription of drugs for erectile dysfunction per practice, in pandemic (April 2020-March 2021) versus non-pandemic (April 2019-March 2020) time periods. Differences between the periods were assessed using Wilcoxon tests.In the non-pandemic period, there were 195,895 men, and in the pandemic period, 192,659 men visiting urology practices in Germany. A total of 10,977 men were initially diagnosed with ED in non-pandemic and 12,213 (+11.26%) men in pandemic time periods. Although the differences of new ED diagnoses were not statistically significant, a non-significant increase of new ED diagnoses was observed across all age groups. Also, a non-significant increase in new ED prescription drugs was detected across all age groups.Even though less urology practice-visits of men with ED were recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase of new ED diagnosis was observed across all age groups between April 2020 and March 2021.