Let G be an undirected graph. An edge of G dominates itself and all edges adjacent to it. A subset \(E'\) of edges of G is an edge dominating set of G, if every edge of the graph is dominated by some edge of \(E'\). We say that \(E'\) is a perfect edge dominating set of G, if every edge not in \(E'\) is dominated by exactly one edge of \(E'\). The perfect edge dominating problem is to determine a least cardinality perfect edge dominating set of G. For this problem, we describe two NP-completeness proofs, for the classes of claw-free graphs of degree at most 3, and for bounded degree graphs, of maximum degree at most \(d \ge 3\) and large girth. In contrast, we prove that the problem admits an O(n) time solution, for cubic claw-free graphs. In addition, we prove a complexity dichotomy theorem for the perfect edge domination problem, based on the results described in the paper. Finally, we describe a linear time algorithm for finding a minimum weight perfect edge dominating set of a \(P_5\)-free graph. The algorithm is robust, in the sense that, given an arbitrary graph G, either it computes a minimum weight perfect edge dominating set of G, or it exhibits an induced subgraph of G, isomorphic to a \(P_5\).