AB015. Extracorporeal shock wave therapy as an alternative treatment for Peyronie’s disease

Extracorporeal shock wave (ESW) was introduced in urology for treatment of Peyronie’s disease (PD) near 20 years. The treatment is not invasive and appears to be effective. However, evidences on long-term follow-up of ESW in PD are still lacking. In addition, effects of ESW on PD are inconsistent. Some studies believed that ESW may resolve pain in PD patients, but not reduce curvature and plaques size. Note that our current evidences supported that ESW could both relieve pain and reduce the size of plaques. Two explanations of the mechanism of how ESW relieve pain looks plausible; one is that direct damage to the plaque and the other is that ESW causes increasing vascularity of the area by some unknown mechanism. The aim of this report was to summarize contemporary evidences regarding the clinical efficacy of ESW as a conservative treatment, and to report our recent data.