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Diagnosis and treatment patterns of Peyronie’s disease among different racial, ethnic, and regional groups in the Veterans Affairs healthcare system

International Journal of Impotence Research volume 35, pages 706–711 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Peyronie’s Disease, which is known to have racial/ethnic disparities in the general population, has never been studied in the veteran population. We compared the diagnosis and treatment rates for Peyronie’s Disease among United States veterans of various racial-ethnic backgrounds at Veterans Affairs medical centers, which are equal-access systems. We queried the Veterans Affair Informatics and Computing Infrastructure to identify 17,647 Peyronie’s Disease patients in the United States by ICD-9 or ICD-10 code between 2015–2020. We assessed demographic characteristics, clinical characteristics, Veterans Affairs facility information, and treatment patterns. Racial-ethnic demographics of veterans with Peyronie’s Disease were 71.4% White, 15.4% Black, 5.8% Hispanic, 1.6% Native American, 0.3% Asian, and 5.4% unknown. Treatment rate was 13.6% overall, 13.6% of Whites (ref), 14.3% of Blacks (p = 0.2985), 13.5% of Hispanics (p = 0.9205), 9.1% of Asians (p = 0.3319), 16.7% of Native Americans (p = 0.1406), and 9.6% of unknown (p = 0.0041). White patients were more likely to receive injectional therapy and less likely to undergo surgery than Black patients. Peyronie’s Disease patients at Veterans Affairs facilities are treated at the same rate, indicating that equal-access healthcare systems may mitigate racial-ethnic disparities. Further research is necessary to account for differences in disease severity and Veterans Affairs surgeon availability.

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Fig. 1: United States Census Regions used for geographic analysis [25].

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All data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This project was funded by the Copeland Foundation Grant awarded by the University of Miami, Department of Public Health Services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Sirpi Nackeeran, Isaac Zucker, Iakov Efimenko & Alexander Weber

  2. Department of Public Health Services, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    Scott C. Brown

  3. Desai Sethi Urology Institute, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

    Ranjith Ramasamy & Thomas Masterson

  4. Department of Surgery, Bruce W. Carter VA Medical Center, Miami, FL, USA

    Thomas Masterson

Authors
  1. Sirpi Nackeeran
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Contributions

SN—Methodology, software, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing – original draft, funding acquisition. IZ—Methodology, validation, data curation, writing – review & editing. IE—Methodology, investigation, data curation. SB—Methodology, writing – review & editing, supervision. RR—Conceptualization, writing – review & editing, supervision. TM—Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, resources, writing – review & editing, supervision, project administration.

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Correspondence to Sirpi Nackeeran.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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This study was approved by the Bruce W. Carter Veterans Affairs Medical Center Institutional Review Board.

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Nackeeran, S., Zucker, I., Efimenko, I. et al. Diagnosis and treatment patterns of Peyronie’s disease among different racial, ethnic, and regional groups in the Veterans Affairs healthcare system. Int J Impot Res 35, 706–711 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00615-y

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