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The Department of Health should appoint a dedicated national lead for men’s health to improve outcomes, suggests a report* from the Men’s Expert Health Policy Group (MHEPG), published today.
Neither men nor clinicians are sufficiently clued up about the potential risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as erectile dysfunction and low testosterone, for example, which is needlessly putting men at risk of an early death, says the MHEPG, which is funded by Bayer HealthCare.
Cardiovascular disease causes over 45,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, with erectile dysfunction affecting an estimated 2 million men over the age of 18 in 2011 alone.
Men with erectile dysfunction are 43% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than men without the condition, and around 5% of men with the condition will have undiagnosed diabetes, the evidence suggests.
Around 630,000 men were affected by low testosterone level in 2011, and it has been estimated that this can double the risk of death.
“We know that men die more often prematurely from cardiovascular disease than women. However, patient and clinician awareness of the risk factors linked to cardiovascular disease in men is still low, which suggests that we are missing out on opportunities to prevent cardiovascular complications in men,” says the report.
It makes a raft of recommendations to improve men’s health outcomes, including routine audits of the experiences of men accessing primary care services to pinpoint where improvements could be made and launching a national curriculum to train healthcare professionals to treat men affected by erectile dysfunction and low testosterone.
The Department of Health should provide clarity about where commissioning responsibilities for men’s health services sit in the new health and care system and publish annual progress reports on the implementation of the Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy and Sexual Health Improvement Framework, it recommends.
And it should publish a detailed breakdown (by age, gender and condition) of the 30,000 preventable deaths identified in the Department of Health’s Call to Action to reduce avoidable premature mortality and the refreshed Mandate to NHS England, it says.
Public Health England (PHE) should work with professional groups, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and Royal College of Nursing, to identify how the diagnosis and treatment of men’s health conditions can be improved as part of the wider ‘Making every contact count’ initiative, it suggests.
And PHE should commission a public health observatory to lead work to establish the prevalence of men’s health conditions, including erectile dysfunction and low testosterone in England. This should also include research on the proportion of men with diabetes who suffer from erectile dysfunction.
Hugh Jones of the MHEPG, and Professor of Andrology at the University of Sheffield, commented: “For too long men’s health needs have been under the radar and early warning signs of cardiovascular disease, such as erectile dysfunction, have not been used to help prevent unnecessary and potentially life-threatening conditions.
“In a world where patient outcomes and experience are at the heart of the health service we need to make sure that men’s health issues are being taken seriously.”
He added: “Policymakers, commissioners and healthcare professionals need to work together to seize the opportunity presented by biomarkers like erectile dysfunction to stop men unnecessarily dying from preventable cardiovascular disease.”
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