MOST PATIENTS DON'T GET COUNSELING ABOUT SEX AFTER HEART ATTACK
Most patients don't
receive counseling about resuming sexual activity after having a heart attack,
according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
Researchers
interviewed 3,501 heart attack patients in 127 hospitals and one month later by
telephone in August 2008-January 2012 in the United States and Spain. The
patients' median age was 48 years and two-thirds were female.
One month after their
heart attacks, only 12 percent of women and 19 percent of men reported they
received sexual counseling from their healthcare provider -- though most
reported they were sexually active within the year before their heart attack.
"Even with
life-threatening illness, people value their sexual function and believe it is
appropriate for healthcare providers to raise the issue of resuming sexual
activity," said Stacy Tessler Lindau, M.D., M.A.P.P., study lead author,
associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and geriatric medicine and
director of the Program in Integrative Sexual Medicine at the University of
Chicago Medical Center.
In rare instances when
healthcare providers counseled about sexual activity, they often recommended
restrictions more conservative than medical guidelines. For example, those
patients given restrictions more most often told to limit sex (35 percent),
take a more passive role (26 percent), and/or keep their heart rate down (23
percent).
"Healthcare
providers should let their patients know that for most it is OK to resume
physical activity, including sexual activity, and to return to work,"
Lindau said. "They can tell their patients to stop the activity and notify
them if they experience chest pain, shortness of breath or other concerning
symptoms. If the healthcare provider doesn't raise the issues, I encourage
patients to ask outright: 'Is it OK for me to resume sexual activity? When? Is
there anything I should look out for?'"
In the United States
and worldwide, heart disease is the leading cause of death. About 720,000
people have a heart attack in the United States each year and about 20 percent
are 18-55 years old.
In 2013, the American
Heart Association published a scientific statement about counseling patients
with cardiovascular disease about sexual activity. The statement concluded that
sexual counseling should be tailored to the individual needs and concerns of
cardiovascular patients and their partners/spouses.
"When the topic
of sexual function is left out of counseling, patients perceive that it's not
relevant to their medical condition, or that they are alone in the problems
they have resuming normal sexual activity," Lindau said.
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