Ronald Virag

Ronald Virag (born 7 December 1938) is a French cardiovascular surgeon who came to specialise in andrology, the study of the male reproductive system. Born in Metz to Hungarian parents who had become French citizens, he studied medicine at the University of Paris, trained as an intern and resident in the Paris public hospitals, and became a chief resident in cardiovascular surgery. Interest in male sexual dysfunction caused by vascular disease, first met in patients with Leriche's syndrome, turned him toward erectile dysfunction, his main field of study since 1978. He devised surgical interventions, including a penile dorsal vein arterialization that carries his name, and in the early 1980s described the injection of papaverine into the penis to produce an erection, a technique used worldwide since 1983. He founded a private institute for the study of erectile dysfunction in 1981 and was later elected to the French National Academy of Surgery.