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Sexual health in heart failure patients: Break the silence

Pallavi Rai * and Santoshi Sahani

Background: Patients with HF may report a decrease in sexual performance, a loss of sexual pleasure or satisfaction, a decrease of sexual interest, and a decrease in the frequency of sex.1?4 For a lot of HF patients, sexual health is important, with 52% of the men and 38% of the women with HF reporting that sex was important and sexual health was impacting their quality of life. Purpose: Discussion, advice and counseling about sexual health and dysfunction are needed to decrease worries of HF patients and partners, avoid skipping medication because of fear for side effects, or prevent inappropriate use of potency enhancing drugs or herbs and improve quality of life. Conclusions: Sexual counseling is an area of importance for HF patients; therefore, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals must take an active role in providing sexual counseling in practice. Cardiac patients who receive sexual counseling has been shown to improve patient knowledge, better sexual desire and satisfaction, fewer fears about sexual activity, being more likely to engage in sexual activity, and better confidence in the ability to engage in sexual activity. Clinical implications: Psychological and physiological consequences of heart failure affect sexual health of patients. Sexual health is an important quality-of-life concern for patients and their partners, and healthcare providers help them by sexual counseling of both partners