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Cialis Earns Highest Loyalty from the Patients

November 20, 2007

- International Journal of Clinical Practice –

Patients with erectile dysfunction (ED), treated with Cialis for the first time, are more likely to continue taking this type of PDE-5 inhibitors, while those, who received initial prescriptions for Viagra or Levitra, are more likely to switch to some other treatment option, - says the results from the Erectile Dysfunction Observational Study (EDOS) conducted throughout the Europe.

Europeans have always been more loyal to Cialis than to other PDE-5 inhibitors Viagra and Levitra; so, that is not a surprise that a new clinical study results, enlightening one more advantage of Cialis over its closest competitors, came from Europe and namely Greece, Spain, Germany and UK.

The EDOS study was designed in order to find out the patterns of switching from one PDE-5 inhibitor to another among the people, who receive their first prescription for any of three available medications of this class (Viagra, Levitra, or Cialis). In total 8047 men with erectile dysfunction participated in the study, which lasted for 6 months.

After analyzing the results of the study, scientists came to a conclusion that most of the patients continued to take one and the same medication throughout the whole study, regardless of the exact brand medication they were initially prescribed. However, the continuation rates of every particular PDE-5 inhibitor were significantly different.

The study showed that about 89 % of all those patients, who were initially prescribed with Cialis, decided to continue this type of therapy and not to change their medication in favor of some other PDE-5 inhibitor. For comparison, of those study participants, who received either Viagra or Levitra for their initial prescription, only 63-64% chose to follow the initial treatment strategy and not to change the prescribed medication.

What is also interesting is that 25% among those in Cialis group, who decided to change their medication, switched back to Cialis by the end of the study; while less than 10% of those, who decided to switch from Viagra and Levitra, returned to their initial prescriptions.

Among those who decided to switch from Cialis, the preferences were divided almost equally among Viagra and Levitra (46.5 % of patients decided to take Viagra, and 53.9 % preferred Levitra). In contrast, among those, who decided to switch from either Viagra or Levitra, about 85% chose Cialis as their new option to treat erectile dysfunction.

During EDOS study the scientists also found out that certain factors, like severity of erectile dysfunction or its primary cause also had some influence at the switching patterns. Thus, for example, patients with mild ED were less likely to change the initially prescribed medication than those with severe ED. Patients with the impotence of physical origin were significantly more likely to switch from one medication to another than those, who had erectile dysfunction of mixed origin. However, those patients, who suffered from ED stemming from psychological problems, were no more likely to switch than patients who had ED of physical origin.

So, one of the key findings of the above mentioned study is that initial prescribing of Cialis to people with ED raises significantly the rate of probability that those people will continue taking the same medication in future, while in case of initial prescription of PDE-5 inhibitors other than Cialis patients are more likely to switch from one medication to another.

Nick

External resources
http://www.urotoday.com/42/browse_categories/erectile_dysfunction_ed/patterns...
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1742-1241.2007.01560.x