Erectile Dysfunction and Coronary Artery Disease in Patients with Diabetes

The review deals with recent findings regarding the association between erectile dysfunction (ED) and coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with diabetes. Indeed recent longitudinal studies have shown that ED is able to predict future cardiovascular events not only in nondiabetic but also in diabetic patients. In addition, in diabetic patients ED seems to be strongly associated with the presence of silent CAD. The mechanism by which ED is linked to CAD seems to be the presence of endothelial dysfunction. This pathophysiological mechanism has been extensively analysed. The possible clinical usefulness of ED to identify diabetic patients with silent CAD or at particularly high cardiovascular risk has been discussed in the review. At last, the review reports current guidelines and recent data available in the literature on the treatment of ED in patients with and without CAD and on the prevention of CAD in patients with ED.