Thaindian News

Washington, May 22 (IANS) Patients become less active sexually after a heart attack, especially if they don’t get instructions from doctors about when it is safe to resume sex, says a new study.
In the study of 1,184 male and 576 female heart attack patients, nearly half the men and about a third of women reported receiving discharge instructions on resuming sexual activity.

Even fewer - less than 40 percent of men and less than 20 percent of women - talked about sex with their physicians in the year following their heart attack.

One year after heart attack, more than two thirds of the men reported some sexual activity, and so did about 40 percent of the women.

Men were 1.3 times and women 1.4 times more likely to report a loss of sexual activity after one year if they didn’t receive information on when to resume sex.

“Sexuality is an important part of life throughout life, and most heart attack patients are sexually active,” said Stacy Tessler Lindau, who led the study and associate professor of obstetrics/gynaecology and medicine-geriatrics, University of Chicago.

“For the most part, physicians just aren’t discussing this topic with their patients after a heart attack,” added Lindau.

These findings were presented at the American Heart Association’s 11th Scientific Forum on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke.