CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION IN PERSIAN MEDICINE

Introduction: erectile dysfunction (ED) is a growing problem worldwide. It is age related and the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by older patients to improve their sexual function has become common. Since Persian Medicine (PM) is one of three popular medical schools with its special view point of etiology, classification of disease, diagnostic methods and therapeutic approaches; current study is designed to clarify clinical characteristics of ED in PM. Methods: information on erectile dysfunction, sexual dysfunction and their related signs, symptoms and clinical tests was obtained from original documents and manuscripts; Moreover, we investigated the utilization of these findings in conventional medicine through searching PubMed, and Google Scholar databases. Results: there is a rich human heritage still unstudied in PM dating back to ancient times. In PM documents, 35 clinical finding of ED were identified, about half of theme is objective, and while we still use most of Subjective ones in current patient report outcomes. Conclusions: diagnosis of ED in PM is logically like conventional medicine; however, its classification of ED is different because PM believes in etiology, therefore due to lack of research on clinical assessment methods, more investigations are required to evaluate PM diagnostic procedures and treatment tactics. Keywords: Persian Medicine; Arabic Medicine; Unani Medicine; Erectile Dysfunction; Impotence; Signs and Symptoms