Bibliometric analysis: Milestones in sexual medicine, erectil dysfunction therapies over time

Abstract

Background: The development of sexual medicine has a broad historic background, from mystic and religious understandings of conception and virility to the pathophysiologic understanding of fertilization and erection. New therapeutic treatments have emerged from a historic knowledge of sexual medicine. Unlike other disciplines, sexual medicine has maintained different management options throughout its history.

Objective: The aim of the present article was to analyze and evaluate publication trends in sexual medicine to evaluate erectile dysfunction behavior and its indicated therapies over a twenty-year period, providing a temporal description of changes in paradigms in this branch of medicine, as well as of its development and associated research.

Methodology: A bibliometric analysis by five-year periods, utilizing PubMed, was carried out.

Conclusion: There was an increased trend in publications related to testosterone, phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, and antioxidants, whereas the number of articles on vacuum systems remained steady. The present analysis reveals that there is still much to be explored in the field of sexual medicine