The treatment of Peyronie's disease (PD) remains a dilemma since the true pathogenesis of PD remains an enigma. Consequently, new molecules and therapies continue to evolve. The safety and efficacy of conservative treatment for PD has not yet established.
To provide the available information of the status of conservative therapy for PD.
A systematic literatures search was conducted using PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library for English-language journal articles between January 2000 and July 2019, using the terms "Conservative treatment for PD", "medical treatment for PD", "non-invasive therapies for PD" and "minimally invasive therapies for PD'. This systematic review was conducted in agreement with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) system. We also manually reviewed references from selected articles. The risk of bias in the included RCTs was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment tool (RoB 2).
Conservative treatment is accepted as the initial treatment step in most of the cases. This kind of therapy includes various methods of treatment such as medical, non-invasive and minimally invasive therapies. Ideal management of PD is not yet available. It is not possible to assess the value of treatment without well-designed, randomized, placebo-controlled, large-scale clinical studies.
Optimistically, in the near future, we may witness emergence of efficacious new agents and modalities to revolutionize medical, non-invasive and minimally invasive treatment of this devastating condition.
Andrology. 2020 Oct 24 [Epub ahead of print]
Ahmed I El-Sakka
Department of Urology, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt.