If Viagra doesn’t Help Me with My Erectile Dysfunction, What Else Can I Do?

Q. Viagra doesn’t seem to be working for me. I started out with one 50-milligram tablet taken an hour before I expected to have sex but was still unable to get an erection strong and long-lasting enough to have intercourse with my partner. What other options are available to me?

A. You can increase your Viagra dose to 100 milligrams to see if the larger dose does the trick. If that also fails to overcome your symptoms of ED, you might find relief with one of the other ED drugs on the market. Although all of these drugs are similar in chemical structure to one another, there is enough variation that one drug may work for one man but be less effective in another. If neither of these solutions works, it’s possible that you will have to try another form of treatment altogether.

Such alternatives include penile injection therapy, which involves the injection of a vasodilating drug directly into the shaft of the penis, or a penile implant. Yet another option is a vacuum erection device, which basically consists of a plastic cylinder that fits over the penis and a pump mechanism to pump all the air out of the cylinder.

As a vacuum is created, blood rushes into the penis, creating an erection. At that point, the plastic cylinder is removed and a constricting band is placed at the base of the penis to keep the blood in place until the sexual activity has been completed.