WEBMED – Rachel S. Rubin, MD: I’m Dr Rachel Rubin, urologist and sexual medicine specialist in the Washington, DC, area. We are coming to you live from the Mayo Clinic Urology Conference in Maui, Hawaii, with the world’s leading experts in men’s health, sexual health, and quality of life.
I’m bringing in Dr Allen Morey from the North Dallas area, one of the world’s leading experts in reconstructive urology. He deals with all things urinary incontinence, penile curvature, and sexual health.
Dr Morey said something at this conference that really put my chin on the floor. He said, “The urethra is a sex organ. It is androgen dependent.”
This is so important because it’s true for all genders. So, Dr Morey, tell us more about why you made that comment and about the incontinence in men that you deal with all the time.
Allen F. Morey, MD: For many years, I’ve worked at cancer centers where, through the various treatments for prostate cancer, the men suffered from urinary incontinence and we put a lot of artificial urinary sphincters in those patients.
I had one patient who asked, “Why do I keep having this erosion?” Of course, the erosion is where the cuff compresses the tissue surrounding the urethra, and the tissue gives way, leaving a hole in the urethra.
I looked at him and noticed that he was pale. And I thought, Let me check his testosterone level. We started checking it on everybody who had this problem, and sure enough, the ones who had the cup erosion — who had the atrophic tissue around the urethra — most of them had low testosterone levels. Some of this was due to the cancer treatment, but in other men, it was just due to old age.
We started thinking that this is a causal relationship. And we tested it. I had a fellow who was a board-certified pathologist before becoming a urologist. He obtained some specimens from the urethra and did very sophisticated, elegant stains on that tissue. We found that it’s just erectile tissue surrounding the urethra. That’s why I call it a sex organ …
