Commentary: sildenafil in phallometric testing--an evidence-based assessment of sexual offenders.

The field of medicine has moved toward best practices based on evidence. There is pressure on all medical disciplines, including forensic psychiatry, to adopt this approach. Some areas of forensic psychiatry have a stronger scientific basis that clearly fits the definition of evidence-based medicine than do other areas. One of these areas is the assessment and treatment of sexual offenders, which has a strong scientific basis and meets the definition of evidence-based medicine, as defined by Sackett et al. in 2007. Phallometric testing is an objective, physiological indicator of deviant sexual preferences that support the diagnosis of paraphilias and the assessment of sexual offenders. The current article by Kolla et al. is an effort to improve the reliability of phallometric testing related to diagnosis by pharmacologic stimulation.