The good news from this meeting presentation is that the majority of heart attack patients are sexually active afterward.

There has been little information about this, said one of the University of Chicago researchers.

However, this research also showed that heart patients who don’t discuss resuming sex after recovery are less likely to do so. One infers from the study that neither doctor nor patient bring up this important subject.

This is a communications problem which can affect the patient’s quality of life.

This doctor should bring this up, but, apparently, not all doctors do.

However, if the patient wants to know whether sex is safe and when, the patient should feel comfortable asking the question.

Bloomberg Businessweek/HealthDay News

“People who don’t have a frank talk about sex with their doctor after they have had a heart attack are less likely to resume sexual activity, new research finds. (Emphasis added)

“The study of 1,184 men and 576 women treated for heart attacks found that the men were 30 percent more likely and women 40 percent more likely to avoid sex in the following year if they didn’t receive information on when to resume sexual activity.

“The news from the study wasn’t all bad, said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and medicine-geriatrics at the University of Chicago, who was slated to report the results Friday at an American Heart Association meeting in Washington, D.C.

“What we found is that the majority of people who have heart attacks are sexually active after the heart attack,” Lindau said. “This is something we haven’t had great data about.” (Emphasis added)

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek, May 21, 2010

Source: Meeting Presentation, American Heart Association, May 21, 2010