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This is a question for fellow bionic brothers with the AMS 700 prosthesis. Does the pump operate as advertised (most of the time) for inflating and deflating?

The reason I ask is that mine seems to operate erratically most of the time ..... I am always able to inflate and deflate the cylinders but it takes some manipulating.

1 It is usually very difficult to squeeze the pump bulb to begin with. After 2 or 3 attempts the bulb will "crush" and then it will be easy to pump. Once in a while I can "crush" bulb with first squeeze.

2 Sometimes the bulb will not pop back out i.e. refill. I can usually squeeze the sides and get it to refill.

3 Sometimes I can hear or feel the fluid leaving the cylinders when I press the deflate button and it will completely deflate with a little squeezing of the penis. Other times it will deflate about half way and it is necessary to press the deflate button a second time.

4. Cylinders tend to auto inflate sometimes .... when bladder is full or during bowel movement.

I am just wondering if this is the norm or if I am doing something wrong...... I am abut 2.5 months past surgery. Will see URO tomorrow and see what he says but was curious if others have the same experience.

nuguy2 wrote:This is a question for fellow bionic brothers with the AMS 700 prosthesis. Does the pump operate as advertised (most of the time) for inflating and deflating?

The reason I ask is that mine seems to operate erratically most of the time ..... I am always able to inflate and deflate the cylinders but it takes some manipulating.

1 It is usually very difficult to squeeze the pump bulb to begin with. After 2 or 3 attempts the bulb will "crush" and then it will be easy to pump. Once in a while I can "crush" bulb with first squeeze.

2 Sometimes the bulb will not pop back out i.e. refill. I can usually squeeze the sides and get it to refill.

3 Sometimes I can hear or feel the fluid leaving the cylinders when I press the deflate button and it will completely deflate with a little squeezing of the penis. Other times it will deflate about half way and it is necessary to press the deflate button a second time.

4. Cylinders tend to auto inflate sometimes .... when bladder is full or during bowel movement.
.

I have had simlar issues. I discussed them in a set of posts under the heading "AMS Pump Failure" that I started in January or February 2013. I followed up in that topic as I got more experience. I have not posted in there since June as all the problems cleared up and I haven't had any issues since early June. However, I seldom got the "crush" you describe when pumping and there did not seem to be any correlation with when I got it and when I had problems. If anything I had more problems when I got it. I haven't had a "crush" since early June so at least for my pump they are not necessary for it to work right. One other guy posted in response on that topic that he gets them all the time. There seems to be some difference in how the AMS pumps work. I think mine had some initial problems and they cleared up after it got "broken in". My doc told me that might happen.

Your problem #2 I had. Except for the first time it happen, I could always get it out of the "bad mode" by deflating and then starting pumping again. Sometimes I had to repeat the deflation 2 or 3 times to get it going right.

Regarding your #3, my doc told me to always squeeze the penis while holding the deflate button. I do that and hold both until well deflated which only takes a few seconds.

Regarding #4 I get a little auto-inflating. I think part of it is that the rear cylinders have fluid that does not get pushed to the reservoir during deflation and some of that migrates to the front cylinders over time. Still I think I get a little migrating from the reservoir to the cylinders. It is not very much so I just deflate again once a day and that takes care of 98% of the issue. I did ask my doc before surgery if there could be some accidental inflation when I am singing as in singing one is suppose to use abdominal muscles to push the diagram up. He said he has seen some problems with guys who have a rather large belly in that they sometimes squeeze the reservoir when bending over and get a little accidental inflation. Someone else posted on FT that their doc told them to squeeze to bulb once after deflating to keep it from auto-inflating. I tried that and it did not make any difference regarding auto-inflating for me. Maybe it works for some of the pumps though.

Dave

I had initial problems with autoinflation but, at about eight weeks, they have resolved. My doctor was not alarmed about this stating that he has never had to replace an AMS pump for this reason. He attributed the problem to the reservoir being tight and encouraged me to keep the prosthesis as fully inflated as possible except when pumping it up. He suggested wearing snug underwear and I wore Evolve briefs from Target for a while (Note: I'm skinny).

Saw my URO on Friday and got a few answers to my problems ......

1) Mainly he said it was too soon after surgery to expect flawless operation .... still in a learning mode and should get better.

2) I found out the deflate button was not where I thought it was .... it is actually on the right side of the pump .... I did not realize that the pump was orientated with the arms facing up and down.
Makes me wonder how I ever got it deflated cause I thought it was on the bottom side.

3) He said that I should hold deflate button down continuously and squeeze penis ..... not press and release per instruction card.

4) On another aspect ....I was having a problem with Medicare rejecting some of the hospital pre admission charges .... he directed me to URO accounting/coding department and said they would help me resolve problem with hospital. They had required me to sign a wavier on lab charges stating that if Medicare did not pay I would and several tests were rejected .... I had determined that if other diagnostic codes beside the basic Generic ED were shown on claim Medicare would pick up the charges in question. This amounted to $403 in addition to my copay.... The copay on the actual procedure was only $592.

nuguy2 wrote:3) He said that I should hold deflate button down continuously and squeeze penis ..... not press and release per instruction card.

4) On another aspect ....I was having a problem with Medicare rejecting some of the hospital pre admission charges .... he directed me to URO accounting/coding department and said they would help me resolve problem with hospital. They had required me to sign a wavier on lab charges stating that if Medicare did not pay I would and several tests were rejected .... I had determined that if other diagnostic codes beside the basic Generic ED were shown on claim Medicare would pick up the charges in question. This amounted to $403 in addition to my copay.... The copay on the actual procedure was only $592.

Regarding your 3), my doc told me the same thing so that is what I have been doing

Regarding your 4), Medicare paid all my hospital and lab bills without a fuss. However, I have had other cases where Medicare denied a lab tests and my doctor's office was able to resubmit a "reason code" such that Medicare then paid the disputed bill. There are lots of reason codes and the doctor's office can get good at submitting the right one to make the payment work.

Regarding your "pump collapse" problem, I had that happen to me again 8/25/13, after not having happened since 6/5/13. I have been keeping a running log of when it happened and what I did and I added a new entry for the latest event. You can see it under the topic "AMS Pump Malfunction".

Dave