Heart attack victims urged to consult doctors about sex fears

Thursday, May 27, 2010

A life insurance comparison website has been encouraging people that have recently survived heart attacks to speak to their doctors after it was recently revealed that a growing number of those people who have suffered heart attacks are to scared to have sex.

The study was carried out by researchers in America, they questioned 1,700 different heart attack survivors, and what they found was quite surprising as roughly one in three respondents said that they were having sex less often since their attack, with many attributing the lack of desire to have sex to a fear that they may suffer a repeat attack and die during the act.

Insurance comparison website, Quoteboffin.co.uk, has encouraged heart attack victims to talk to their doctors if they have similar fears. Both the British Heart Foundation and the doctor leading the study, Dr Stacy Tessler Lindau, have insisted that the chance of people suffering repeat attacks during sex was very minimal, assuming that is during an appropriate stage of the recovery period. According to doctors: “most patients should safely be able to resume sexual activity at the same time as being able to perform moderate exercise such as climbing a flight of stairs.”

The study also found that those patients who had been consulted about sex by doctors prior to their release from hospital were much less likely to hold such fears as they were given proper assurances on their health, however, less than half of the men that were surveyed and only a third of women actually had these conversations with their doctor.