BERKELEY, CA (UroToday.com) - To date there have been few studies that explored sexual desire (SD) associated with radical prostatectomy (RP).
| "Patients’ attitudes concerning their sex-lives are a key factor to be taken into account when choosing treatment for localized prostate cancer." |
In our recent article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, we assessed the relationships between preoperative SD and sexual QOL for 5 years for 285 men who underwent RP. Of the subjects, 52% had high or a fair level of SD before surgery, whereas 48% reported that the level of their SD was low. The high SD group reported better sexual function and sexual bother scores than the low SD group at baseline (both p<0.001). Fifty-one percent of the high SD group reported that SD level just after RP was poor or very poor, which did not return to the preoperative level for 5 years. Nearly 20% of the low SD group regained higher SD after RP than the baseline level. The high SD group showed worse sexual bother scores than the baseline throughout the postoperative follow-up (p <0.001). However, the low SD group demonstrated equivalent sexual bother scores after RP compared with the baseline.
Patients’ attitudes concerning their sex-lives are a key factor to be taken into account when choosing treatment for localized prostate cancer. A richer understanding of the changes in sexual health after RP will enable physicians to provide clinically relevant information that allows patients who elect surgery to be comfortable with their choices.
Written by:
Shunichi Namiki, MD as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations etc... of their research by referencing the published abstract.
Department of Urology
Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine
Sendai, Japan
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