Sexual difficulties in a gynaecologic practice
P. La Calle, O. Martín, P. Rincón, A. Zamora, Z. Diab, P. Soler, D. Maresca, M. La Calle

SUMMARY

Objective: To know the prevalence, distribution and correlations of the difficulties in sexual relationships (DSR) among the patients of a private gynaecologic practice.

Procedure: A total of 1.118 patients were interviewed between April and May 2002; those who attended for specific or complementary procedures were excluded. The interviews were conducted by seven gynaecologists who asked the same three questions: “do you have a sexual relationship?”; if the answer was yes, “do you have any difficulty in your sexual relationship?”; and if affirmative, “which is it?”. The different answers were coded and included in a database. The database used in the practice is Access; we used Access and Excel to analyze and correlate DSR with the following entries: age, well-being, parity, and history of abortion and contraceptive method.

Results: The prevalence of any difficulty in their sexual relationships was 11,8% (IC 95%: 9,8-13,8). The distribution in age groups showed a prevalence of DSR of 6-13% in the 20 to 50 year old group; it increased to 30% between 50 and 55 and decreased again to 11% in women over 55.We didn’t find any significant statistical correlation between sexual difficulties and parity, history of abortion or the use of a contraceptive method. Although we found that DSR was more frequent in practicers of coitus interruptus (27%) than in those women who used an intrauterine contraceptive device (1.2%). The most frequent sexual difficulties found in our query were dyspareunia (36%), low sexual desire (22.4%), insufficient lubrication (15.2%) and anorgasmy (8%).

Conclusion: The prevalence of DSR in our practice shows the need for ruling out its existence in the general gynaecologic practice.

KEY WORDS

Sex disorders, sexual dysfunction, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, prevalence, gynecology, sexology.