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Unless you’ve recently experienced irritation or trauma to the penis, erections should not be painful. If they are, you should see a doctor as soon as possible. According to NetWellness.org, the leading causes of erectile pain are the following:

Peyronie’s Disease: Characterized by a lump or plaque that forms on the penis, Peyronie’s can cause painful erections but can be treated.

Penile Mass: Any abnormal growth or lump on the penis should be thoroughly investigated and evaluated by ultrasound or biopsy if indicated.

Priapism: A prolonged erection — lasting more than four hours — is not only painful but also can cause scarring of erectile tissues if left untreated.

Phimosis: This condition involves a tightness of the foreskin that prevents it from retracting over the head of the penis upon erection. This can be a congenital condition or a symptom of infection.

Penile injury: This covers a wide range of possible damage to the penis itself and the blood vessels and nerves that serve it. Seek medical attention immediately if you suffer from such a trauma.

Penile prostheses — surgically implanted — come in two basic types: malleable and inflatable. The cost of the implants varies sharply depending on the type of implant you choose, the surgeon performing the procedure, and the part of the country in which surgery is done. That said, the total cost of penile implant surgery ranges from a low of $10,000 to a high of $20,000. Health insurance plans often cover implant procedures, particularly if the patient is suffering from ED caused by a disease or as a side effect of surgery, such as prostate surgery.

Of the two types of implants, the malleable prosthesis represents older technology and involves somewhat less surgery, making it the cheaper of the two. Because inflatable penile implants consist of additional components that must also be hidden beneath the patient’s skin, they cost more than the malleable type.

Penile prostheses come in two basic types, malleable or inflatable, and both involve surgery to implant the devices in the penis. In the case of the inflatable prosthesis, your surgeon must also implant a pump and a reservoir to hold the fluid that is used to inflate the penis for sexual activity.

For both malleable and inflatable prostheses, the surgeon will implant two cylinders — usually made of medical grade silicone. One goes into each of the penis’s two corpora cavernosa, which are cylinders of erectile tissue that ordinarily fill with blood to create an erection.

According to the Urology Care Foundation, the malleable implants create “a degree of permanent penile rigidity or firmness that enables the man to have sexual intercourse.” A malleable implant can be bent downward to allow urination or upward to facilitate sexual intercourse.

Other components for the inflatable prosthesis include the aforementioned pump and reservoir, the former implanted in the scrotum and a fluid-filled reservoir implanted under the skin of the lower abdomen. To prepare for sexual activity, the man triggers the pump that draws fluid from the reservoir to fill the cylinders in the penis making it rigid enough for intercourse.

Key factors in how you and your doctor decide to treat your ED include the cause of the dysfunction, your overall health, other medications you may be taking, and the ease with which you can tolerate various treatments.

If the cause appears to be psychologically based, you may have to spend some time with a psychiatrist or psychotherapist to work through the hangups and anxieties that are interfering with your ability to achieve an erection.

For the vast majority of men, the first line of attack against ED is drug therapy, which involves taking one of the FDA-approved PDE5 inhibitors, which temporarily increase blood flow to the penis and allow erection to occur.

If drugs don’t work or are inappropriate, your doctor may suggest that you use a vacuum constriction device (penis pump) or penile injection therapy. Finally, there is surgery, which sometimes can restore normal nerve and vascular function in the penis or implant a device that makes it possible for you to have an erection when appropriate.

There is no fail-safe way to pinpoint any one cause of erectile dysfunction, so it is often necessary for you to sit down with your doctor and together consider all the factors in your medical history that might be causing your ED.

That said, if you’re a relatively young man under the age of 40 and are unaware of any physical ailments, such as atherosclerosis, diabetes, or high blood pressure that might cause erectile dysfunction, then the odds are that your ED is psychologically rooted.

To see whether anxiety over your sexual performance might be responsible for your problems, do a little soul-searching on your own. AskMen.com suggests that performance anxiety may well be the culprit if you often obsess over “how long you lasted, how good or bad you were in bed, what your partner thought of the sex, [or] a past sexual experience that didn’t go as planned.”

Actually, there are a couple of devices that might be referred to as penis pumps. One of these works as part of a prosthetic implant system that consists of thin cylinders surgically implanted in the penis into which a saline solution can be pumped from a reservoir that is implanted under the skin of the lower abdomen. When activated, the cylinders fill with the saline solution that creates an erection suitable for sexual activity.

There’s also an external type of penis pump, technically known as a vacuum constriction device. The device consists of an acrylic cylinder that can be fitted over the flaccid penis. A pump, powered by hand or battery, then removes all of the air in the cylinder creating a vacuum. The vacuum draws blood into the shaft of the penis, causing it to become erect. A constriction band can then be fitted to the base of the penis to keep the blood from flowing out until sexual activity is complete. Using the constriction device for more than 30 minutes is inadvisable, according to WebMD.

If you’re asking this question, the odds are pretty good that you do have ED, according to MensHealth.com. It cites a study in which 1,000 men were asked if they had erectile dysfunction. That study, published in “BMC Urology,” revealed that 90 percent of men who claimed they were “unsure” suffered from at least some degree of this problem.

With normal erectile function, a man should be able to achieve and maintain an erection strong enough for intercourse. As he ages, it may be necessary to have more foreplay or self-manipulation to stimulate the penis, but erection should still be attainable. When it’s either difficult or impossible to get an erection or if an erection disappears before sexual activity is completed, it’s a pretty sure sign that you’re suffering from ED.

If these erectile difficulties occur only once in a great while and can be blamed on fatigue, too much to drink, or other temporary causes, it’s probably not a cause for panic.