When the Topic Turns to Sex: CASE SCENARIOS IN SEXUAL COUNSELING AND CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE

Patients with cardiovascular disease and their partners frequently have concerns about sexual intimacy, and sexual counseling is needed across health care settings to ensure that patients receive information to safely resume sexual activity. The purpose of this review is to provide practical, evidence-based approaches to enable health care providers to discuss sexual counseling, illustrated by several case scenarios. Evidence shows that patients expect health care providers to initiate sexual activity discussions, although providers may be hesitant and often rely on patients to ask questions. Although some providers cite lack of knowledge or confidence in their ability to provide sexual counseling, others mention time pressures in the clinical setting. Although such barriers exist, sexual counseling can be individualized to the cardiac condition of a patient with a few select questions. The representative examples of patients with angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass surgery, heart failure, and implantable cardioverter defibrillator are used to illustrate key points and provide a model for sexual counseling in practice.