Originally published in Huddle.today online magazine
Nov 22, 2016 by Cherise Letson Nurse Practitioners Lisa Chapman and Dawn Leblanc.
Two nurse practitioners in Fredericton want to help men rise to the challenge of solving erectile dysfunction (ED).Lisa Chapman and Dawn Leblanc, who both work as nurse practitioners at CFB Gagetown, have opened Triumph- A Men’s Health Treatment Option, a clinic in downtown Fredericton specializing in a new kind of erectile dysfunction treatment: low-wave shock wave therapy. It’s widely known that erectile dysfunction can be caused by a variety of different factors. However, Chapman says treatments up to this point have been “band-aid” solutions that don’t address the deeper underlying causes. Their new clinic aims to do just that. “This is a treatment gap that we have seen in care options,” says Chapman. “We will be assessing the factors that contribute to erectile dysfunction and offer treatment options, which could include a new treatment option called ‘low-wave shock wave therapy’ directly applied, which has a curative approach to erectile dysfunction.” Triumph will be the first clinic in the Maritimes to offer low-wave shock wave therapy. The treatment uses the Health Canada-approved and literature reviewed machine ED-1000. That’s right, the Erectile Dysfunction 1000. The painless treatment is administered twice a week over three weeks. After three weeks off, the treatment then continues twice a week for three more weeks. “The treatment approach is used in many other medical modalities. For example, patients go to their physiotherapist and need an ultrasound for their elbow to loosen up the scar tissue,” Chapman says. “This is the same sort of principle. There’s no pain. There are no side effects and our success rate is around 80 per cent.” “And we all know how success is defined.” Located at 112 Queen Street, the clinic has a discreet back entrance with a buzzer to get in. The clinic only operates outside traditional business hours to maximize privacy for patients. Chapman says the goal is to the experience as comfortable as possible. “There can be quite an embarrassment for a patient to talk to their regular clinician or anybody about this issue,” Chapman says. “And it’s easy [here], because that’s the key message we want to give. All we do at this clinic is erectile dysfunction. You don’t even need to tell me what’s wrong. You’re able to get over that huge mountain of embarrassment and move on to actually giving the best care that we can.” Triumph is already taking patients. Those interested just need to go to the clinic’s website and use its confidential self-scheduler to make an appointment. Like other treatments for erectile dysfunction, the shock wave treatment is not covered by Medicare or most health insurance plans. The cost for the treatment is $3000 plus HST. Chapman says it is the same price for a year’s worth of ED pills. “That pricing is exactly the same as one year of pills, assuming two pills per week,” Chapman says. “However the vast majority of patients have effects well into two plus years, so that reduces the cost even more.” Besides offering the latest effective treatment options for ED, Chapman says they want to help reduce the stigma surrounding it. The hard fact is about 50 per cent of Canadian men over 40 experience some level of ED. It’s a lot more common than one may think. “Remember 15, 20 years ago our mothers would never say the word ‘breast.’ Now everybody’s on board for getting breast cancer fixed up, and we should be,” Chapman says. “But maybe we can make this as mainstream as well.”