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Recently in Salon Health & Body

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The new gizmo, called Eros, is produced by the 3-year-old device manufacturer UroMetrics. It's distinctly premillennial in design: A soft funnel connected to a battery-controlled vacuum draws blood down into the clitoris. It strikes me as the kind of thing you could buy with comic-book coupons, if you were willing to forgo X-ray specs or a decoder ring. But this sucker is going for $359 a pop, available by prescription only in the United States.

The ailment gynecologists, urologists and other doctors will be treating with Eros is female sexual dysfunction (FSD), whose symptoms were determined during several meetings of an international consensus panel. (Confusingly, the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual lists female sexual arousal disorder, or FSAD, whose symptoms overlap with FSD.) FSD covers four areas: lack of desire, inability to get aroused, inability to have an orgasm and pain during sex.

Virginia Vitzthum Virginia Vitzthum's column appears every other Tuesday in the Urge edition of Health & Body + Archives

Eros addresses only arousal and orgasm, says inventor Claire Hovland, CEO, founder and chairman of UroMetrics. "Desire is more hormonal," he says, while Eros is just for stimulating the flow of blood. An engineer and physicist, Hovland started down the path toward Eros in 1984, when he and a surgeon friend developed an instrument for measuring the quantities of blood the heart pumps.

Eros treats the clitoris like the little penis it so closely resembles. Both organs are full of tiny cabernosal arteries lined with smooth muscle. During sexual arousal, that smooth muscle relaxes, allowing the arteries to fill up with blood. Eros mimics the action of male vacuum-erection devices (VEDs), suction tubes that draw blood into the penis and relax the smooth muscles. I've always thought of VEDs as rip-offs, but Hovland says they're more effective than Viagra, helping "millions of male users" get it up.

UroMetrics representatives say insurance companies have been covering "men's treatment options for years," presumably the sucking tubes as well as Viagra. UroMetrics keeps pointing this out in press materials, throwing down the gauntlet to insurance companies to cover Eros.

Eros was tested on 25 women from 23 to 67 years old. About half were post-menopausal; 15 suffered FSD and 10 did not. Subjects used it at home and kept a diary of the effects; Hovland says they were encouraged to use it with their partners, but some of the women preferred to vacuum solo.

Twelve of the 15 dysfunctional women reported "more satisfaction." Seven of them said that they had more orgasms and 11 reported more lubrication. Of the 10 "normals," four had more orgasms, three more lubrication, but only two claimed "more satisfaction."

Hovland says Eros took longer to work on post-menopausal women, because their clitorises are more likely to be "atrophic." Blood is needed, he explains, not just for engorging, but also for cleaning. Collagen can build up in the tiny arteries, and if the arterial blood doesn't come in and wash it out, "it can form scar tissue in both penis and clitoris." This kind of sexual dysfunction shares artery-contracting risk factors -- smoking, high cholesterol -- with heart disease, which may help doctors persuade pudgy smokers to shape up.

Next page | Every woman I know likes her clitoris approached slowly and indirectly