Safety of Internet Prescribed Erectile Dysfunction Drugs

Erectile dysfunction and impotence affects more than 100 million men worldwide, and more than 600,000 men aged 40 to 69 years seek care annually in the United States. Effective and reliable therapy with PDE-5 inhibitors (such as viagra and cialis) is driving more men to seek treatment. Given the increasing use of the Internet to seek health care information and the social stigma of erectile dysfunction, the Internet is being increasingly used by men seeking erectile dysfunction treatment. However, the safety of these Internet prescription systems is appropriately being questioned because of lack of oversight by state regulation and the lack of perceived safety with the current face-to-face system.

In the August issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, researchers from Utah and several colleagues compare the relative safety of two systems — an online prescribing service versus traditional physician consultation — for patients seeking medication to treat erectile dysfunction.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the safety of a US-based, state-regulated Internet system vs a multispecialty primary care system for prescribing phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors for erectile dysfunction.

The Internet is rapidly becoming an important platform for health care communications. This technological advance is driven by the delivery of health care from single to multiple physicians, by direct-to-consumer advertising that empowers patients to make their own health care decisions, and by greater public demand for rapid delivery of health care information.

Unsurprisingly, the increase in demand for electronic health information has evolved in association with direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals, which has led the public to seek Internet prescribing. However, prescribing via the Internet has resulted in legal, professional, confidentiality, and safety breaches that threaten public safety.⁴ In response to e-medicine prescribing, the health care industry has appropriately raised serious concerns about the safety of prescribing over the Internet.

The researchers randomly selected 1,000 patient medical records from patients seeking ED treatment from Jan. 1, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2005. Half (500) of these patients used the online prescriber (the e-medicine group), and 500 consulted a physician (the traditional medicine group) for treatment.

Phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors were chosen for this study for several reasons. This drug class is safe and effective for erectile dysfunction, regardless of etiology, with clear contraindications. Further, recommendations for using the drug have been generally established by expert opinion, rather than by evidence, leading to variance in prescribing.

Using statistical analyses, the researchers compared the safety of both approaches — e-medicine versus traditional medicine — in treating patients who have ED. The safety comparisons looked at a number of criteria, including prescription appropriateness, how often the prescribers used a diagnostic tool called the International Index of Erectile Questions (IIEQs) and the level of patient education provided by prescribers.

Evaluating both systems for these safety criteria, the researchers concluded that the e-medicine system “outperformed the traditional system in most of the safety variables tested.” One area the e-medicine system appeared to excel was patient education. The authors noted that 100 percent of the e-medicine clients received written manufacturer product information, and 75.2 percent of e-medicine clients received tailored electronic messages. In comparison, study data showed that no medication instructions were recorded for 51.8 percent of patients who received prescriptions via a traditional physician consultation.

CONCLUSION

A state-regulated e-medicine system was shown to be similar to a traditional multidisciplinary primary care system for all safety end points in prescribing PDE-5 inhibitors. The e-medicine system outperformed the traditional system in most of the safety variables tested. Additional studies of e-medicine vs traditional medicine systems are needed to confirm our results.

See Here for Full Text Original Article: Safety of Prescribing PDE-5 Inhibitors via e-Medicine vs Traditional Medicine

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