Bicycle Riding, Arterial Compression and Erectile Dysfunction

A National survey approximately estimates 57 million people rode a bicycle in 2002. Males were more likely to ride bicycle than were females¹. Another survey estimates US bicycles and accessories sales in 2010 to be 6 billion dollars. Several research studies implicated bicycle riding as risk factor for erectile dysfunction². One possible reason is ischemic injury due to compression of perennial arteries between the bony pelvis and the bicycle seat. Previous studies attempted to measure this damage employed several indirect methods including computational models³, pressure mats on a stationary bike⁴, measuring transcutaneous oxygen pressure in the penis⁵, MR imaging of the pelvic region⁶, doppler flowmetry. None of these studies measured forces exerted directly on the perennial arteries and correlated to each riders occlusion force. Most of these studies are done on a stationary bike set up inside the lab. The objective of our study is to build a device to measure the forces exerted on the perennial arteries and develop a method to correlate the forces with each riders occlusion force. Another goal is to conduct the rides on the road where actual bike riding takes place. Recent publications⁴ suggested that cutting off the nose from the saddles may help to prevent the damage to the arteries. Based on these findings several noseless seats came to market. We also wanted to test some of them in our study.