Ask patients with chronic low back pain and they will tell you…sex is affected by their condition. New research, recently presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), has found that 70% of patients consider sexual activity “relevant” to their life quality. Patients who underwent surgery for spinal spondylolisthesis (DS) and spinal stenosis (SS) were twice as likely to report no pain during sex.
“Our current research sheds light on the effect that spinal surgery has on a patient’s sex life and begins to describe the impact spinal disease has on this very important aspect of life, ” said senior study author Shane Burch, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, in the March 24, 2015 news release.
Utilizing data from the Spine Patients Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT), researchers reviewed 1, 235 patients diagnosed with DS or SS who answered questions such as, “In the past week, how has pain affected your sex life?” Patients selecting the options, “unable to answer” or “does not apply to me, ” were placed in the sex-life non relevant (NR) group. Patients selecting other options were placed into the sex-life relevant (SLR) group. The mean age of patients in the NR and SLR groups were 68 and 63 years, respectively; 70% of patients were in the SLR group.
Patrick Horst, M.D., a study author and orthopedic surgery resident at University of California, San Francisco, told OTW, “The fact that sex-life is relevant to 70% of patients in our study with degenerative spine disease is interesting and has never been reported in this large of series. We also found it interesting that over 40% of patients report some level of pain related to their sex-life at baseline. We were also impressed by the dramatic difference in the percentage of patients reporting pain with sex-life between the operative and non-operative groups. Through four years of follow up, only 15-20% of patients that underwent surgery report pain with their sex life through four years of follow up while around 40% of patients treated non-operatively report having pain.”
Asked how orthopedic surgeons can address the sexual issue with patients, Dr. Horst noted, “This study sheds light on the fact that sex life is an important consideration for patients with degenerative spine disease. It provides the surgeon with some evidence that low back pain is relevant to sexual function and that questions regarding improvement of sexual dysfunction can be addressed.”
