Men with erectile dysfunction may just wait five years and a better solution would become available in the market which promises more comfortable and efficiency.

According to NewsWisconsin around 40 % of men aged 40 - 70 is suffering from erectile dysfunction. This incapability loses self-confidence and in worst cases resulted marital problems. Technology for penile implants has not improved in 40 years.

The known drug called Viagra has been used by more men with such problem but the drug does not effect on the one-third of them. But this time an idea was discovered and hoped to solve this men's problem.

A new faculty member in the Department of Urology named Brian Le thought that a heat-activated metal called Nitinol, a nickel titanium alloy could be best use for implants to men with erectile dysfunction.

People who read his journal Urology called his idea as "the bionic penis". Along with him are Alberto Colombo and Kevin McKenna at Northwestern University and Kevin McVary at Southern Illinois. They have thought that as Nitinol is an elastic metal, it is medically used for endovascular surgery, it would remain flaccid in normal body temperature, but when heated this would "remember" an expanded shape and return to that shape. Recently, the use of a remote control is tested and it resulted positively.

Compared to the current inflatable pump, using Nitinol can be more effective and easier to implant since it would not involve water and pump just like the inflatable pump. Aside from that the penis is not permanently erected, it would only erect when heated.

"We're hoping that, with a better device, a better patient experience, and a simpler surgery, more urologists would perform this operation, and more patients would want to try the device," Le says.

The research was supported by Boston scientific because it would target a large market. More and more men are having erectile dysfunction because aside from aging and smoking, reading and seeing pornographic materials could trigger it, as Mirror reported.

The Nitinol idea has already experimented and it proven well on mechanical testing.

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