The costs of getting an erection just keep going up, prompting me to once again ask, how far men will go for their erections?
In 2005, following about forty reports of sudden vision loss, the FDA required that the makers of the erectile dysfunction drugs Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra all update their labeling to more prominently indicate that loss of vision could be a side effect of taking these medications.
Now it seems as if vision may not be the only sense you could lose to the erection gods. This month the FDA has posted a new notice (and this nifty video which looks a little like an old SCTV skit) warning about thirty reports of sudden hearing loss in men who had just taken one of the erectile dysfunction drugs known as PDE5 inhibitors. Once again they are requesting that the manufacturers of these drugs make warnings about sudden hearing loss more prominent and provide information for patients about what to do in case it happens to them.
According to the notice many of the reports did not include medical follow up, so there is no way of knowing for certain that the drugs caused the hearing loss (or why, for that matter, it caused hearing loss in these men while it didn’t in millions of other men who are taking the medications). In about a third of the cases the loss was temporary.
While I firmly believe there’s a place for these drugs, I also miss the good old days when getting old meant more creative sex, and not just fooling the body into thinking it’s twenty years younger than it is.
Read more – FDA Patient Safety News: Sudden Hearing Loss from Erectile Dysfunction Drugs
Related – Senior Sexuality
Photo credit: Steve Mason/Getty Images

