Outcomes & Safety: The Numbers Behind the Surgery

Volume and experience

Dr. Edward Gheiler, MD, FACS performs approximately 400 inflatable penile implant procedures a year, part of more than 8,000 prosthetic-urology cases over his career. He is a Boston Scientific AMS 700 Center of Excellence and directs an implant surgical training program for other urologists. In implant surgery, volume is not a vanity metric — it is one of the strongest predictors of both safety and result.

His practice also draws a high share of difficult cases: roughly one in four of Dr. Gheiler’s implant procedures are revision or removal-and-replacement cases — a reflection of the complex, redo, and referred implants other surgeons send his way.

A very low, honestly measured infection rate

Infection is the complication men fear most, and it is the one most tied to technique and discipline. Dr. Gheiler’s self-reported reoperation-for-infection rate is approximately 0.3%* in his current antibiotic-irrigation practice — well below commonly cited figures — achieved through a fixed sterile protocol on every case.

How that number is measured

A number is only as good as how it is counted. Rather than relying on memory, any reoperation within 90 days of surgery is reviewed and adjudicated as infection or not by urologists blinded to the case details, using standard surgical-infection criteria. That independent, blinded method is what makes the figure meaningful rather than a marketing claim.

*Reflects Dr. Gheiler’s self-reported, single-surgeon experience in his current antibiotic-irrigation practice; it is not an independently audited or population-level rate. Individual results vary; infection and complication rates depend on patient-specific factors, and revision cases carry different risks than primary surgery. Not a guarantee of outcome.