Can Stents Help in the Bedroom?

Medtronic is launching a study that looks at whether the placement of stents in pelvic arteries can help men with erectile dysfunction.

Stents are metal mesh tubes that commonly are placed in heart arteries during angioplasty procedures. Medtronic and other companies that operate in the Twin Cities have made a big business over the years in selling drug-coated stents used in the heart.

But Medtronic says it now wants to study whether drug-coated stents can help men whose erectile dysfunction cases are related to a blockage in the arteries that feed the penis.

"It's not a stent in the penis," said company spokesman Joe McGrath. "It's a stent in one of the pelvic arteries."

Medtronic said today it expects to enroll 50 patients in the U.S. study over the next year. Participants must have had suboptimal responses to the drugs widely used to treat erectile dysfunction -- Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.

Minnetonka-based American Medical Systems and a Danish company called Coloplast, which has operations in Minneapolis, already market penile implant devices that are a surgical alternative for men who aren't helped by the drugs.

Pelvic stents could provide a less-invasive alternative, McGrath said, because the devices are delivered through catheters threaded into the body through a small incision.

In addition to Medtronic, Natick, Mass.-based Boston Scientific is a big stent manufacturer, with drug-coated devices made at a division based in Maple Grove, Minn.